


call this world home

by Sixteenthdays, stygiomedusa (grainjew)



Category: Dream SMP (Fandom), Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Fix-It, Gen, Go Fish, Non-Human Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Teshuva, Unnecessary Thematic Handholding, bullying dream and other fun techno-endorsed pastimes, canon divergence is after bad's prison visit/before sapnap's!, dreamxd is the world borrowing dream's shape, prisons bad relationships good actions have consequences, relearning how to be a person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29738244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixteenthdays/pseuds/Sixteenthdays, https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/stygiomedusa
Summary: Pandora’s Vault is a perfect prison, impregnable and inescapable— unless you have canonical access to creative mode.Or: DreamXD-who-is-the-world breaks Dream out of solitary confinement and traps him at Ranboo’s house instead, where Dream is forced to face the ruin he's made of his relationships head-on.Or: Dream gets bullied, Ranboo tentatively grows a backbone, Techno has the time of his life, Philza thinks this is allhilarious, and Puffy realizes she still has hope.
Comments: 92
Kudos: 489





	1. Obsidian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter: panic attacks, suicidal ideation, self-harm

Dream is alone, and then he isn’t.

This is less surprising than it should be, given that he’s currently in solitary confinement in the heart of an inescapable prison, walled off from any contact by layers and layers of magma and obsidian. He’s alone, like he should be, like a great deal of work has gone into ensuring that he is; and then he’s not.

He knows it’s there without even needing to look up, but look up he does anyways, eventually. It’s not like there’s anything else interesting happening.

His own face stares back at him, eyes narrow and judgmental behind its mask.

 _What do you want now_ , Dream says, or tries to say; his voice cracks and shatters on its way past his lips, and he remembers oh, he hasn’t talked in days- oh, he hasn’t drank anything in maybe that long, maybe longer. He coughs, rough and painful, curls in on himself a little with the force of it.

Can he get sick? He doesn’t actually know. But if there would be a time for it, it would be now.

Something cool and smooth is pressed into his hands, and it’s a half-second delay before he realizes it’s water. He gulps it down so quickly he almost chokes, soothing his parched throat. The water is clear and fresh, colder and cleaner than he ever gets in here. The water in his cell is always lukewarm, always tastes faintly of metal.

He wipes his mouth, takes a moment to turn the empty glass over in his hands. It didn’t exist, a second ago, and now it does.

He doesn’t say thank you. If the gesture means anything at all, it’s probably self-preservation. They can’t die one without the other, after all.

“I could kill myself with this,” he says instead, bouncing the flask in his hand, imagines shattering it against the obsidian into a dozen tiny glass blades. His voice creaks in his throat. “Might change things up. Swimming in lava gets boring, after awhile.”

The world wearing his face doesn’t answer; it never does, these days. That’s fine. He’s gotten used to talking to himself in here, and this is pretty much that, with a few extra steps. Any pair of eyes an audience, even his own, and he always has loved attention.

“How _are_ things outside?” he asks, grins a little to hide how hungry he is for an answer to that question, even though he knows it sees right through to the worst and most honest parts of him anyways. There’s no point in acting here, not really, but the mask he wears across his eyes has already been broken, and he doesn’t know what’ll be left behind if he drops them all. “Good? Bad?”

He waits for an answer. Doesn’t get one, obviously. It just stares, and frowns, like it’s seeing right through his skin and broken mask to the ugly mess beneath, like he’s a puzzle it needs to solve.

He means to taunt it further, prod it about the unfixable state of affairs, about how they’re both going to die like this, eventually, rotting away miserable and slow, about how they’re going to go down together, but-

But if he does that, it can always just disappear again.

How sad is it, how _pathetic,_ that he doesn’t want it to leave?

“I think I’m lonely,” he tells it, and his voice snaps again somewhere in the middle, cracks the sentence into halves.

 _Lonely_ seems like too small of a word for it, really, for the oppressive quiet emptiness, for the clawing desperation at the back of his skull that mounts and mounts with every passing second ticked off by the missing clock. Sam hasn’t brought him a new one yet, since he broke the last. He doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know what day it is.

A hand closes around his wrist, calloused and familiar and warm.

And then he is-

_-n o t h i n g-_

_-hurt hurt hurt sick sick sick grief and pain and loss and-_

_-blasted-out craters and shattered cities and vines full of blood and bile and it hurts hurts hurts hurts-_

And then he is himself again.

And he is no longer in the cell.

* * *

The first thing Ranboo thinks when he walks into his house and sees Dream sitting against his wall is an exceedingly calm, _oh, I’m hallucinating again_.

And then, a heartbeat delayed, the panic hits.

It buzzes like an intensifying haze of static inside his head, heart hammering and throat closing up, and _nonononononono_ he _can’t_ black out, not right now not when Dream is _right there_ , what is he _doing here_ , he’s supposed to be in prison, _permanently_ -

And-

And Ranboo knows, logically, that this _can’t_ be Dream, actually, because he’s in prison, he _is_ , so this _must_ just be Ranboo’s brain giving out on him a little more, tearing the rug out from under him yet again. Just another waking nightmare, except that now instead of leading him to the prison it’s followed him home. It should be reassuring, maybe, the understanding that there’s no way this can possibly be real, but it isn’t, not at all.

Sometimes he thinks he’ll never get Dream out of his head.

Dream’s mask is broken, cracked diagonally down the middle, and Ranboo remembers seeing that happen, remembers the gunshot-sharp _snap_ of sound when Tommy drove his axe down into Dream’s face, smashing through porcelain and skin and bone alike, remembers the wet splatter of blood on blackstone.

His memory isn’t great, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget any part of that day.

The eye staring at him now from behind the broken mask is so green it almost seems to glow, and what he can see of the face around it looks hollowed-out and haggard. There’s dirt in Dream’s unwashed hair, probably fallen down from Ranboo’s unfinished walls.

He looks very real.

He looks so very real.

( _And_ , an awful traitorous little corner of his mind whispers, _what if he_ is?)

“No,” he says, and he’s dimly aware that he’s shaking, tremors shaking their way up his back and shoulders hunched anxiously inward as he grabs at his own wrist for support. “No, you- you can’t be here. You can’t be- you’re not here. You’re _not_.”

“Probably,” Dream (not Dream) agrees, and if Ranboo was in his right mind it might strike him how different this voice sounds from the one he always hears ringing in his skull- how much more tired, how much more resigned- but Ranboo hasn’t been entirely in his right mind for months now, and at the moment he can barely even hear through the buzz of panic in his ears.

“You’re- go away! Go away!” Ranboo’s voice is going shrill and his breathing is doing something funny, and he can barely hear himself through his panic. Is he going to black out? He’s probably going to black out- he _really_ doesn’t want to black out. “You’re in _jail_. You’re not here, I _know_ you’re not, why won’t you just leave me _alone?_ ”

Dream is still just looking at him, and he’s quieter than the voice in Ranboo’s head usually is, but that might actually be worse, because he’s just- _staring_ -

- _why won’t he stop staring it stabs at his eyes at the back of his skull it hurts it makes him want to_ -

He’s hyperventilating, probably. His head hurts and his breath is coming too fast and his vision is going a little hazy and Dream is still _staring_ at him and he might be yelling-

And then the door opens behind him.

* * *

Techno had prepared for a whole host of possibilities when he heard screaming from Ranboo's shack, and he really can't say he's disappointed by the reality of the situation.

"Go away- go away go _away_ ," Ranboo is repeating, backed up against a wall, mismatched eyes blown wide in panic. “You’re not real, you’re not, you’re _not here_ -”

Dream is licking dry lips under his broken mask. His visible eye is wide and acid-green, and he’s digging fingers into the dirt and grass at his side like he can’t believe it’s real. “I’m not,” he agrees, and laughs, jagged and cracked. There’s a rasping, dehydrated edge to his voice. "At least it's company."

Techno stares at them. He was woken up for _this?_

"Neither of you are hallucinating," he announces. They both look at him, identical head-turns. "Ranboo, calm down. Dream, is this gonna be a permanent thing? 'Cause if you're hiding out here, you'll need to pay rent."

"What," says Dream, and Techno takes a moment to enjoy the sight of the most powerful man in the server, completely dumbfounded.

"Um," says Ranboo, which is totally unmerited.

Techno rolls his eyes. "Do I need to stab you guys to convince you this is real? I've got a sword, I can," he adds, and unsheathes it from his hip.

"No no no no I'm good I think," says Ranboo, which is unfortunate, because Techno wouldn't mind some good violence to round out the evening. Dream doesn't say anything, though, so maybe he’s game?

Footsteps, behind him. The doorway moonlight blocked out by the shadows of wings. Techno glances over his shoulder.

Phil yawns, blinks, sticks his head over Techno's shoulder, blinks again, nudges Techno in the shoulder, nudges Dream in the shoulder, pats Ranboo on the shoulder, frowns at Dream, and says, "Okay, who's going to explain what's going on here?"

“They both think they’re hallucinating,” explains Techno. “Which is obviously wrong, because I can see both of them, and I don’t hallucinate.”

“The voices in your head would beg to differ,” says Phil.

“The voices in my _head_ don’t turn up in other people’s _living rooms,”_ says Techno. Ranboo is still curled in on himself like a bundle of sticks having a nervous breakdown, which is probably not great all things considered, but that’s more Phil’s area of expertise.

Phil makes an exasperated noise. “Setting _that_ aside,” he says, and folds his wings against his back properly. Preparing for a fight. Now that his wings are useless for flight, all they’d do for him in battle is make him a bigger target, and Ranboo’s living room is too small to fit the full span of them comfortably anyways. He angles a sarcastic sort of glance at Techno. “Isn’t Dream supposed to be _in prison?_ I’d like to address that.”

“Oh,” says Techno. “I just figured he escaped.”

Ranboo makes a wordless endermany noise.

And Dream laughs, choking and hoarse, like he’s gotten a mouthful of someone’s misplaced redstone dust. Finnicky irritating stuff. Techno will admit that if there’s one bit of the villain routine Dream has down, it’s the evil laughter.

Of course, he immediately ruins the whole effect when he loses the laugh to an uncontrollable cough. Typical.

“Not sure we’ll be getting an answer out of him,” notes Phil. “Seems a bit occupied.”

“A bit,” agrees Techno. Dream is still coughing. Ranboo has started making distressed enderman noises from behind his facemask. “Well, Dream, you paying rent or not?”

Phil muffles a laugh, and Techno elbows him in offense. It’s worth a shot. Rent is serious business, after all. Which Phil should know, him being a real adult and everything.

Dream very abruptly stops coughing. He turns, hands knitted together in his hoodie pocket, and he stares right at Techno’s face. Techno stares back.

It’s the first time Techno’s seen Dream since the three of them were dropping TNT on L’Manberg, since Dream got outsmarted by _TommyInnit_ and shoved unceremoniously in his own jail, and he really does look the part of someone brought low in the most humiliating way possible. Legitimately, it’s almost kind of impressive in its sheer patheticness, especially given how he apparently insists on still wearing the jagged broken half-circle that’s all that’s left of his mask, and the burn-edged green rag that’s all that’s left of his hoodie. It’s got a really obvious crossbow-bolt hole in it. It’s atrocious. And the one eye made visible by the way his mask shattered is swampwater green now, and it’s staring at Techno with all the intensity of a man incredibly obsessed with planting potatoes. Not that Techno would know anything about that.

“You’re real,” rasps Dream, strangled like there’s a whole cod stuck in his throat.

“Wow, you’re slow on the uptake,” notes Techno. “Did we or did we not blow up a country together?”

“You’re _real,”_ repeats Dream, and then he pushes past Techno and nearly knocks Phil over in a frantic rush right out Ranboo’s front door.

Techno blinks. “Ohhkay then,” he says, as Ranboo uncurls the tiniest bit and Phil recovers his balance. “Guess he doesn’t want to lease. What a weird guy.”

Nobody speaks.

Ranboo uncurls a little more. “He’s—”

Dream reappears without ceremony in the middle of the living room floor. One blink there’s air, one blink there’s Dream, mouth open to a wordless inhuman scream like cracking ice. He’s frozen, wide-eyed, trembling so hard Techno thinks he might fall over, and then he shuts his mouth with a clack and tenses like a bowstring and—

Dashes out the door again.

In his wake, Ranboo _crumples._

Phil goes to him where he’s a pointy black-and-white puddle on the floor and crouches down, wings twitching uncertainly behind him, gaze slightly averted. Techno looks around the room awkwardly. Nothing for him to do here except maybe stab Dream if he turns up again. Actually, that sounds fun, he’s totally stabbing Dream. The voices are chanting their approval, and Phil and Ranboo definitely won’t mind. They’d probably cheer him on, it’ll be great, there’d be absolutely _no_ downsides whatsoever. A perfect plan.

Ranboo grabs Phil’s wrist almost immediately with the spindly spidery black fingers of his left hand, and the mask over his mouth is moving the whole time like he’s saying something none of the rest of them can hear.

“Share with the class, Ranboo,” mutters Techno.

Phil catches his eye and mouths _help,_ so Techno shrugs back at him. Ranboo’s slow metamorphosis into soup is Phil’s problem now. Techno has stabbing concerns.

Right on cue, Dream reappears, half-screaming again like the voice of a particularly distressed ghast, and Techno draws his sword gleefully. Blood. The voices scream their approval, a pulsing raging tide. Blood!

But then he pauses. If he kills Dream, sure, it’ll sate his evening bloodlust, but who _knows_ where Dream will respawn. He hasn’t had this much quality entertainment in a _week;_ he can’t just go throwing it away willy-nilly. The voices complain like the fixated little menaces they are, and Phil glances up from the Ranboo puddle to give him a _Really?_ look, but he ignores them both and lowers his sword.

Not that Dream would have noticed either way.

“I can’t leave,” Dream is saying, voice even weaker and raspier than earlier, and his mask is askew, and Techno can’t tell if he’s legitimately clawing at his face or just sort of being dramatic. “I can’t leave I can’t leave I can’t get out I can’t—”

Midsentence, his visible eye widens and he spins on one shaky foot and darts off again. Through the door to Ranboo’s bedroom this time, and Ranboo flinches with his whole body. Techno doesn’t envy Phil right now; if Ranboo digs his nails in any harder, Phil’s hand’ll start bleeding.

Two seconds later, Dream darts back into the living room, a shaky, panicked edge to the usual grace of his movement. His visible eye is narrowed in relief, and his legs give out under him until he’s just as much of a puddle as Ranboo, and he starts talking again, muttering to himself and glancing at Techno’s sword and the clawed white fingers of Ranboo’s right hand. “—can’t leave can’t leave _won’t_ go back can’t go back can’t can’t can’t not there not there I’m safe I—”

Oh, he set a bed? _Fantastic._

Techno stabs him.

* * *

“Oh, this is bad. Oh, this is so bad. Oh, this is _so_ bad.”

Nine paces to the left. Nine paces to the right. The walls are cramped, claustrophobic, why did he make this place so _small_ , he can’t _breathe,_ the water sloshes and trickles just feet away and makes his skin crawl- nine paces to the left, nine to the right, back and forth and back and forth and back.

He doesn’t want to be back here. He _doesn’t_ want to be back here. But he’d needed somewhere to hide, somewhere to put his jangling mess of panic-hazy thoughts in order, and his house isn’t- it isn’t safe. Not now. Maybe not ever again. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

So he’s here. In his panic room. Here because of Dream, again, because of course he is, of course it’s _always Dream_. The crying obsidian in the ceiling is dripping, and there’s a hole in the wall that he doesn’t want to think about, and another in the floor that he also doesn’t want to think about. No voice, at least so far. At least there’s that. _Hah_ , very helpful. Dream isn’t haunting his head, at least not right now, but it’s not exactly an _improvement_ to have him in his _home_ instead, always _looking_ \- always _watching_ -

He rubs his arms to settle nonexistent goosebumps, digs his fingers into his sleeves. Even here, buried under water and obsidian, the memory of that green-eyed stare makes him feel cold, makes his skin prickle up and burn.

“Okay,” he says, partly for the sake of hearing his own voice above the constant _drip-drip-drip_ of the crying obsidian. “Okay. Let’s- let’s think. Let’s think.”

Breathe. Think.

“Dream’s in- my house. That’s- that’s not good. He’s in my house and he can’t leave. Unless- unless he’s lying, about that, somehow, because he’s _always lying_ \- but assuming he’s not, right. He can’t leave. So he’s just- going to keep… being there. Watching. That’s- it’s-“

His voice hitches for a second, and he doesn’t want to cry, and he doesn’t want to cry, but it’s-

“…It’s not _fair_. It’s not- it’s not. It’s- I was away. I was out. I didn’t want- I thought I was _out_. I thought I was-”

He stops just short of _free_ , because that’s not true, and he knows it’s not, because there’s Sam and there’s a nightmare and there’s a book he can’t remember signing, but at least none of those things had _followed him home_. At least he could close his eyes and not think about them; at least none of those things sat on his floor and stared relentlessly through him at all his betrayals and secrets and strings.

And his life isn’t ever fair, but he’d found some sort of peace up there in the snow and the cold with Techno and Philza, some sort of happiness, and why can’t he just have this one thing? Why can’t he just have this one home?

“And- and why me, anyways? Why- he _ruined my life!_ Why won’t he just-“

His fingers dig into his hair, scrape at his scalp, and he’s so tired, and he’s so frustrated, and-

“Why won’t you just _leave me alone?_ ”

He stands for a moment in the middle of the room, glaring at nothing and nobody, at the echo of that smile etched inside his head, but no answer comes. Nothing but his own words echoed back at him, desperate and exhausted and miserably furious.

“What, nothing today? You’re not going to- to come tell me this is all my fault, somehow? That I- I don’t know, that I helped him get out, or something? _Hello?_ ”

Nothing.

It really is just him in his head today, it seems. He’s on his own. For whatever reason, it’s not reassuring.

“…Maybe I should leave.”

Maybe this is a sign. Maybe Dream is never going to stop following him, not so long as he’s useful; maybe there’s nothing for it but to just run, and abandon Techno’s quiet little house on the tundra, and find someplace else to shelter until everyone’s forgotten him and moved on. Maybe there’s someplace he can run that’ll be far enough.

But he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t-

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to lose another home. He doesn’t want to lose any more friends.

He’s so _tired_ of _hurting_.

“…No. No. I’m not- I’m not going to do that. Not- at least not if I don’t have to. And I _don’t_ have to. Right? Right. Dream- Dream can’t hurt me. I think. Techno- Techno’s my friend, right? He won’t- I don’t think he’ll let Dream hurt me, or- do anything bad. And Dream doesn’t- Tommy took all his tools and weapons, right? I saw that. And I keep all mine safe, and so do Techno and Phil, so it’s not like he can steal them. So if- if he does try anything, he can’t- one of us can just- stop him. And he can’t leave! He can’t- he can’t do anything. Yeah. So…”

A shaky breath. It comes a little easier, this time.

“So maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe- maybe. Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe… yeah. Maybe everything will be fine.”

He really- he really needs it to be fine.

He really does.

* * *

Fifty blocks north. Fifty blocks south. Fifty blocks east. Fifty blocks west. Fifty blocks, up, too; he’d towered yesterday with reclaimed dirt to find out. Fifty blocks down, presumably; he’s testing that now.

His hands are bloody.

Ranboo is in his panic room, which is good. Less interruptions that way. Less chance for Ranboo to do something rash. Ranboo is reliable, the only reliable piece Dream has left, but only when he’s asleep, and only when he’s afraid, and Dream has nothing but the thinnest strand of hard-won terror to hold over his head, like this.

He wonders how long it’ll take Ranboo to realize and reach for a pair of shears. Dream can’t let that happen. He can’t lose the only thing he has left he can’t.

Y-level 53. Twenty-two blocks to go. He’s surrounded on all sides by stone, by stone, by stone, and he has nothing in his inventory. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. Nothing not a thing not even cobblestone, not even cobblestone, not even cobblestone, he’s mining with his fists he can’t even have cobblestone. Nothing.

Technoblade is still out with Philza, which means Dream won’t be getting sniped sarcastically from the top of his hole. That’s good, because he thinks he’ll die of fall damage if he has to jump down here again. He could always start another, but he— He doesn’t want to. He really doesn’t want to. He needs to know he needs to _know_ if he can leave from underneath he needs to confirm he needs the knowledge he has nothing he _needs_ it but.

He doesn’t want to have to start again.

His hands are bloody. He’s crouched on the floor, surrounded by stone, and every time he looks up the sunlight pouring down his tiny square is paler, and farther.

Y-level 34. Thirteen blocks left.

He’s surrounded on all sides by stone, his hands are mangled and useless and he’s surrounded surrounded surrounded, and he never used to be claustrophobic, he never used to be, this was his world he knew every inch of it, he never used to be claustrophobic but the walls are dark this far down, dark and closing in and closing in and he thinks he can hear lava snapping and hissing somewhere off to the side and he looks behind the walls at their code and their light to confirm they’re not obsidian and he sees the world there, waiting, everywhere everywhere, and he hits the stone beneath him with his fist and ignores how much it hurts.

Y-level 29, and the world is there, the world is surrounding him, it has to be listening it has to it has to it has to be watching him why won’t it _do_ anything.

“Why,” he asks, because he started speaking aloud at some point. “Why why why why _why_ why?”

Y-level 23. Two blocks, and then he’ll know. And then he’ll know. And then he’ll know.

 _Why,_ he asks, and asks, and asks, and asks, words escaping jagged from his mouth or from his mind until he’s laughing almost, as he wears down stone with his fists, as he scrapes his knees on the fragments left behind. _“Why?”_ he asks the world, he asks the walls, he asks the lava he can still hear cackling, he asks and he chokes on dust, and bleeds on stone. He asks the world, who took him from Pandora’s Vault and trapped him here instead, and for what?

But the world is silent.

Y-level 21. Fifty blocks down and—

_-agony agony grief rivers flowing pain red red red terror agony-_

—he’s back in Ranboo’s ramshackle house, and he’s pressing his knees to his face, breathing staticky, and the jagged broken edges of his mask are digging into his skin, and his hands are useless and stinging and torn, and how pathetic it is that he is bound like this. How useless he is to himself, how worthless to everything he worked for.

At least locked in his tiny featureless cell in Pandora’s Vault, he was a thing worth fearing, he was a threat worth precaution after precaution, he was trapped and bound but he was trapped and bound as a force of nature who could never (ever, ever, ever, ever, ever) be allowed to roam free. At least he’d had that, to hold onto, the hate and fear of the entire server to prove how well he’d succeeded before everything came crashing down, and at least he’d been held captive by fallible, fallible humans and nothing more.

He doesn’t have that, now. Not with the world itself his warden and Technoblade’s mocking laughter echoing in his ears. He doesn’t have _anything_ , not leverage not hope not even wood for a pickaxe, and he has so much more space to move now but it counts for nothing nothing nothing if he’s even more thoroughly bound, and this time with witnesses to his helplessness.

He curls his hands into the fabric of his pants, and watches blood eat away at the green of them. Why can’t he win anymore? He used to be able to win. He used to win. He used to win. His hands are shredded and his mask is broken and he used to be able to win.

“What’s the _plan_?” he asks the floor, he asks the air, and his voice chokes shamefully on desperation.

The world doesn’t answer back.

He sucks in a breath, and he tries not to tremble, and he tries not to cry, and he tries to ignore his hands bleeding uselessly onto the floor. And he can’t even manage a single one.

* * *

Philza absently drops the nether wart buds into the three bottles of water, setting them to boil before glancing over his shoulder, twitching a wing out of the way to look at the room at his back.

Dream is visibly sulking, tucked in the shadowiest corner of the room. He’s been sullenly quiet for the last ten minutes or so, ever since Techno’s last insult had cut almost deep enough to bleed. Ranboo, meanwhile, is on the exact opposite side of the room, blatantly positioning himself as far away from Dream as he can physically get, and occasionally trying to make nervous conversation with Techno, who gives brief, terse answers without ever looking up from his book.

The tension in the room is tangible and thick, and it’s starting to get more than a little annoying.

Phil sighs loudly, breaking the tense silence, and all three look up at him immediately. “Chrissakes, play a _card game_ or something,” he says. “It’s so- fuckin’ uncomfortable in here, Jesus-“

Techno is giving him a slightly exasperated side-eye that clearly says _seriously?,_ but Dream actually looks intrigued, lifting his head. “A card game?”

“Yeah, poker or something, I don’t care,” Phil says.

Dream tips his head a little, considering. “I like poker."

Techno snorts immediately, loud and disdainful. “There is _no way_ I’m playing _poker_ with _you_.”

Dream dares to actually look offended. “What? Why not?”

“Watching you the whole time to make sure you don’t _cheat_ doesn’t sound like fun, Dream,” Techno says flatly.

Dream, to his singular credit, doesn’t even try to deny the implied accusation, instead grinning like a shark that’s just tasted blood. “What, so you’re scared of losing?”

“I didn’t say _that-_ “

“Sure sounded like it.”

“Look, I know you got your whole weird little villain complex going or whatever, Dream, but for most people, rigged games ain’t actually fun-”

“It’s not _rigged_ , it’s just _poker_ -“

“Besides, I’d beat you in a _fair_ game any day. Make it Hearts and you’ve got a deal.”

“Wh- so it’s fair when _you_ get to pick the game? Then you’ve got an advantage on me!”

“Oh, _now_ who’s scared of losing?”

“Um,” Ranboo says, fiddling with his hands like he’s not sure what else to do with them, stubbornly looking at anything but Dream. “We could play Go Fish?”

Dream and Techno break off their argument immediately to shoot him nigh-identical incredulous looks, and in the moment before he starts laughing so hard he nearly keels over, Phil _really_ wishes he had a camera.

“Oh my god. That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard. Yes,” he manages after a moment, still snickering, propping himself up with one hand on the brewing stand. “Yes. Perfect.”

Ranboo brightens, ears pricking up. “O-oh, I have cards, too! Just a second, I’ll go get them-”

He hurries out the door; Dream and Techno both turn disbelieving looks on Phil as it swings shut behind him, and the synchronicity is funny enough to nearly send him into hysterics all over again.

“Go Fish,” Dream says, slowly.

Phil shrugs, not even bothering to try to suppress his grin. “Hey, it’ll be fun!” For him, if nobody else. “You two weren’t getting anywhere with deciding. And I’m sure neither of you are worried about losing to a jumpy teenager at _Go Fish_ , right?”

Techno raises an eyebrow. “Of course not.”

Phil can’t get a good look at the visible part of Dream’s face from this perspective, but he’s pretty sure he’s rolling his eyes. “Whatever.”

Ranboo comes back about a minute later, shuffling a deck of cards between long fingers with what actually looks like a surprising amount of skill, and glances up at Phil. “Um, Phil, do you want to play too?”

“Sure,” he says, dropping down to sit next to the table as Ranboo deals out the cards. He couldn’t care less about the game, but he’s starting to suspect this is going to be at least a little harder for Dream and Techno than either of them anticipate, and he wants a front row seat.

(Ranboo wins three games in a row. By the end of it Dream and Techno are both torn between baffled shock and desperate hunger for a rematch, and the tension in the room has eased enough to breathe through, and this is definitely the best idea Phil has ever had.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic has been a labor of love for the past month, and both of us have had a genuinely absurd amount of fun with the process of making something real out of the frantic late-night discord conversations that consumed our lives. we hope you all enjoy yourselves as much as we did! thank you for reading!!


	2. Dirt

Ranboo idly opens a chest, searching for spare fences with a vague thought towards expanding the cow farm, and blinks.

This is- not his stuff. Or- is it? The chest is full of neatly sorted stacks of stone- cobble, stone, diorite, granite, netherrack, all the chaff that inevitably comes of mining. Which is- he’s pretty sure his stone used to be scattered between those two chests over there, and wasn’t the granite in that one? And-

Okay, so this must be his stuff, because whose else would it be, but he doesn’t know how it all wound up _here_. And also, none of this answers his original question, which is what he focuses back in on, which is, “Where are my _fences?_ ”

He’s talking to himself, mostly, distracted enough by the mystery that he’s actually managed to forget about Dream’s constant, unsettling background presence for once. It’s not like he’s any less _scared_ of Dream than he’s ever been, but, well- any sort of terror can get dulled with enough exposure. It’s been days now, and despite how on edge Ranboo’s been, so far as he can tell, Dream hasn’t really _done_ anything except sulk around and lose at Go Fish.

So Ranboo’s been doing his best to ignore him. He hasn’t really been successful, but at least his heart rate isn’t doing unhealthy things _constantly_ anymore, so he’s chalking it up as a tentative win.

Dream says from behind him, sounding bored, “They’re in the chest on the far right,” and Ranboo nearly jumps out of his _skin_.

“ _What?_ ” he yelps, whipping around to face his unwanted houseguest, and then, after a moment of actual processing, “Wait, what? _Why?_ ”

“All the wooden stuff is in there,” Dream says. “Doors and fences and stuff.”

Which, while technically an answer, doesn’t actually do anything for Ranboo’s actual question, which is still, “ _Why?_ ”

Dream is looking at him like he’s an idiot, something mostly irritated and a little bit condescending in his stare. “I sorted your chests.”

“… _Why?_ ” Ranboo is starting to feel a little bit like a broken record.

Dream shrugs a little. “I was bored. And they were a mess. You’re welcome.”

The first thing that occurs to Ranboo, as he glances into the nearest chest again to look at neatly sorted stacks on stacks of stone and cobble and granite, is that _bored_ must be an understatement.

The second thing is: “…I’m not going to be able to _find_ anything.”

Dream rolls his eyes. “What are you talking about? It’ll be way easier to find stuff now, I did you a favor. There’s a system now.”

“I _had_ a system!” Ranboo- might be yelling a little bit. He’s vaguely aware that after everything Dream’s done to him, this is such a stupid, trivial thing to snap at him over, but maybe that’s exactly why he can. He’s not scared and devastated and hopeless, this time, he’s just _annoyed_. “Don’t- don’t _mess_ with my stuff!”

It’s- not really about the organization. It’s a little bit about the organization. But it’s mostly about how Ranboo doesn’t have much that’s his, and he doesn’t have much that he can be certain of, and Dream’s fingerprints are already all over his life, and he _doesn’t want him touching his things_.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Dream says. “I was _helping_.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to! It was fine how it was! Now I’m going to have to put it all back!”

Dream folds his arms, mutters something under his breath- Ranboo can’t make it out, but he also doesn’t really care. It’s refreshing, almost, to just be _irritated_ instead of having to deal with the ugly cocktail of misery and horror that Dream usually sets seething inside his head.

“Um, I missed that,” Ranboo says.

“I _said_ ,” Dream repeats louder, “you’re being pretty ungrateful.”

Ranboo stares at him for a moment, and then says, “Un- I’m- _this is my house!_ I don’t- I don’t _have_ to let you live here!”

And- oh, there’s a thought.

He hadn’t actually… that wasn’t something that had occurred to him, that Dream can’t _make_ him do anything, at least not right now. That he doesn’t have any obligation to him at all, really, especially when Dream is just going to sit around being rude and sulky and mess with his chests and _stare_ at him all the time.

“I don’t have to let you live here,” he repeats, half to himself. “I- actually really don’t.”

And then, before he can overthink and falter like he always does, while the courage is still there, he crosses the room in two strides, yanks the door open and says, “Get out.”

Dream stares at him, and there’s something- very gratifying about it, actually, about the blank shock in his visible eye slowly shifting into disbelief. He’s a lot easier to read with eyes uncovered, Ranboo registers belatedly. “You- what? You can’t _kick me out_.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t _go anywhere!_ ”

“You can go around here, right? Build your own house.”

“I don’t even have anything to build with!”

What would Techno say? “That sounds like a personal problem, Dream,” Ranboo says, and then spends about half a second desperately wishing to take it back before he sees the look of absolute shock on Dream’s face, eyes blown wide in baffled disbelief.

Oh, this… feels good, actually?

Huh.

“I don’t even have _wood!_ ”

Ranboo considers that for a moment, then crosses the room to the chest Dream had pointed out earlier, the one with all the wooden things in it- what a _stupid_ organizational system, honestly, he was way too scatterbrained for something like that to ever do more than frustrate him. There are a few spare doors inside, just like Dream had said, and he pulls one out and shoves it at Dream.

“There. You have that. There’s dirt. That should be enough.” The words come out short and clipped, because he’s not used to putting his foot down on anything, because he’s still a little afraid if Dream can get a word in edgewise he might get his fingers right back into Ranboo’s head again and talk him out of this, because he _just_ wants Dream out of his house.

“You- fine! Fine. Whatever,” Dream snaps, and the anger and frustration in his voice makes Ranboo twist his hands together on reflex and bite back the automatic urge to apologize. Dream can’t hurt him- Dream doesn’t have anything to hurt him with- he has netherite and Dream has nothing, and-

Dream storms out of his house, and slams the gate behind him.

…and… that actually worked.

That actually _worked_. He told Dream to leave, and Dream just- left. Because _Ranboo_ told him to.

…Huh.

* * *

Techno opens his front door to one of the funniest sights he has ever seen in his entire life.

Dream is covered in dirt, looking abjectly miserable as he mounds blocks of it into a vague square-shape twelve or so paces from the edge of Ranboo’s front fenced area. He’s got a clod of grass in his hair he hasn’t noticed, and he’s stomping his feet like a two-year-old who just got their favorite toy taken away, mouth pulled down flat and mask dirt-streaked from compulsive adjustments.

 _Wow, déjà vu,_ thinks Techno, and bursts out laughing.

Dream angles a venomous green glare in his direction, which would be very impressive, probably, if he didn’t look like a hill had fallen on him.

“Pretty build you got there,” says Techno.

“You wouldn’t know pretty if it bit you on the nose,” retorts Dream, rolling his eyes, and then he turns back to his pathetic little dirt cube before Techno can finish processing the sheer stupidity of the attempt at an insult.

Ranboo is watching wide-eyed from his own open front door, so Techno walks over and leans up next to him, passes him the honeyed bread he’d brought out to either eat or hand over, depending if Ranboo was up. Ranboo takes it, and bites into it, and makes a pleased little sound. Techno looks back over at Dream.

“He’s building a house,” he notes.

“I told him to!” answers Ranboo, a proud bewildered little quaver to his voice. Techno raises an eyebrow. “I told him to build his own house, and he did!”

“Really?” says Techno, not because he doubts it — Dream is right there, scowling at Techno’s dirt and ruining the view from his front porch — but because he’s actually kind of impressed. Ranboo’s got a lot of things, but the ability to talk to Dream without turning into a puddle isn’t one of them. Is this character development in action? Wait, does this mean Techno’s gotta die soon? He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die a mentor’s death!

“Mhm!” chirps Ranboo. Dream tries to start on his roof, which is also made of dirt. Can the man build with anything else? Techno’d had to bully him into taking down that eyesore of a fifty-block tower he’d built the other day; that’d been dirt too. For someone with theoretically unlimited power, you’d think he’d have better aesthetic sense. “Just like that.”

Techno reaches up and pats him proudly on the head. It’s a bit of a reach on account of Ranboo being — by any objective standard and even while slouching — way too tall, but he manages. “Excellent work, my young apprentice,” he says. “This is _hilarious_.”

A breathless, relieved little laugh escapes Ranboo’s mouth and flutters away.

“I kicked Dream out of my house,” he says, wondering and bewildered and like he’s been repeating it to himself for the better part of an hour. Which, it’s Ranboo. He probably has. He’s more high-strung than a herd of thoroughbred horses.

Techno glances at the shadowy trestle of him from the corner of his eye. He’s shaky, leaning against his doorframe for balance. Must have exhausted himself while taking this vast step on his protagonist journey of self-confidence. Or maybe by laughing at Dream; that’s why _Techno_ would be exhausted.

Techno grins at him, and gestures with his head. “I’ve got more bread and honey inside, if you want it. And a better view of this show from the porch. You coming?”

* * *

Phil is taking a quick walk around the property, out of habit. It’s a chance to let his burnt-up wings out to the wind, and it’s a chance to check and make sure nobody (that is, the inclement weather or their latest houseguest) has messed with the torch grid. Not that it’s happened, yet, but better safe than sorry. He’d rather not patch up any more creeper holes, and Dream is pretty obviously bored and self-destructive enough to lure one over and let it explode in his face just for the sake of it.

And… oh, there he is. Speak of the devil.

He’s sitting on the roof of the little dirt lump he calls a house, his feet dangling off the edge. There’s no visible way up, so he must have towered and then broken the blocks after him and left them to despawn, which would have Techno on him about wasting Techno’s precious dirt, if he were here. Phil laughs at the thought, and then wonders if Dream realizes that the only person here with limited dirt is him.

It’s impossible to tell, given that he’s staring at the moon and looking, as he always seems to these days, abjectly miserable. It’s a stark change from the glee and the fury of L’Manberg’s death-knell. Phil doesn’t really care either way, as long as he keeps his strings off Ranboo.

He wanders over to the little dirt lump of a house, and peeks in the open door. Still nothing there, just one of Phil’s torch-grid torches square in the middle of the floor. Really, it’s no wonder Phil’s never seen Dream actually inside his house in the days since he’s built it. Phil wouldn’t want to step foot inside this abomination against architecture either.

Dream has noticed him, realizes Phil when he steps back from the door. He’s looking down balefully with his one visible poison-green eye, and when Phil meets his gaze he says, “What.”

Just about the same mood as normal then, yep.

Instead of answering, he towers up the two blocks he needs to reach the roof, and sits down next to Dream.

“What,” says Dream again, like he’s trying to use the word as a knife.

Phil ignores him, partly because it’s funny and partly answering wouldn’t actually accomplish anything. Not with Dream like this, brought down from godhood to simple personhood and taking the transition about as well as any teenager Phil has ever known. Phil is patient. He can wait.

So instead he looks up at the scattered paint-splatter of stars, and he says, “Nice night tonight.”

Dream barks a bitter, sarcastic laugh. “Sure,” he says.

“I was just saying,” says Phil, mild.

Dream angles a glance at him, noticeable in the way his mask is cracked around one eye to show the skin of him, and the green of him. Phil wonders, occasionally, why he hasn't tried repairing the thing yet, but he thinks he knows the answer. Dream can't possibly know how.

"I couldn't help but notice," says Dream, that cutting thing in his words again, slipping out from between his teeth like some hissing ice-touched wind, "that your wings never seem to have healed right."

For just a moment, Phil contemplates pushing him off the roof. But that cutting thing is all Dream has left, and Phil has always loved to fly on freezing gales. "No," he agrees.

Dream leans forward and twists himself around to stare up at Phil's face. With the broken mask, and the memory of Dream losing over and over at Go Fish to Ranboo's nervous stuttering, it’s a much less intimidating move than it might otherwise be. Phil doesn't react. His wings are unfurled behind him, and the wind blows through them.

"They would have, you know," says Dream, "if you hadn't been locked up." His one visible eye is narrowed, and he is looking through Phil at something no-one else can see. "If L'Manberg hadn't existed."

"They wouldn't have been ruined in the first place if not for L'Manberg," answers Phil. He keeps his voice calm, with an effort.

Dream smiles, vicious and cutting, and the skin around his eye crinkles. "You must have enjoyed seeing it burn, then, Philza," he says. He shrugs one shoulder. "Seeing it explode. Dropping the TNT. Not as good as it never having existed, but as close as we could get, yeah? Bombing the nation that ruined you to bedrock."

"Dream," says Phil, and leans back his head to catch the wind on his face. "You're wrong about one thing. I never regretted losing my wings."

Dream doesn’t have anything to say to that, it turns out, all his meanness run dry under the stars.

His hands grip the edge of the dirt roof, instead, and his mouth twists, and all in one sudden motion he jumps to the ground and stalks off to some other dark corner. He doesn’t sleep. If this is all he does every night, no wonder he’s so bitter in the daylight.

But that’s hardly Phil’s problem. So instead of thinking on it any further, Phil follows Dream to the ground, collects the blocks he towered with, and heads back inside to get some rest.

* * *

Technoblade’s house looks... more inviting than Puffy would have thought, honestly. It’s unassuming, a lovely little cottage situated on a tundra plain, smoke drifting up from the chimney, warm light shining out the windows and glowing through the drifting snow.

It doesn’t look like the sort of place the Blood God himself would live, with his finery and his blades and his crown, but it does look comfortable, and she knows better than most that everyone needs a little comfort, sometimes, so maybe it’s not such a surprise after all. The snow crunches under her boots as she steps closer, climbing the stairs to the door.

She can hear voices inside, overlapping in conversation, which she supposes makes sense even as it gives her a moment of pause. Everyone knows Techno has Philza’s loyalty, after all, and judging by the rougher, more ramshackle buildings on the property, they might have someone else around as well.

She wouldn’t be able to guess; she doesn’t know Techno, really. Barely knows him at all. She’d joined the world after he’d already broken with L’Manburg violently at the peak of the revolution, arriving to the dust and ashes left in his wake. She’s seen him, of course, at the festival, at Doomsday, but she doesn’t even think they’ve ever spoken.

But she knows a few things about him, and she knows he hates empire, hates tyrants and government and control, and so…

And so there’s a chance, and with the bloodvines crawling further and further across the server and into people’s minds by the day, any chance _must_ be worth it. She knocks twice, firmly, to announce her presence, and then before her nerves can fail her, opens the door.

And stares.

Four people, sitting around a low table with cards in hand, stare back. There’s a fire crackling in a corner fireplace, and for a moment the room is absolutely silent but for the sound of logs crackling and settling.

Ranboo, sitting on the floor with too-long legs crossed a little awkwardly, looks up at her, visibly blanches, and says, “… _Puffy?_ ”

Techno, opposite the table from her, gives her a single unimpressed look and says, “Close the door, you’re gonna let all the warm air out,” before glancing back down at his cards. She’s stunned enough that she actually does, kicking the heavy door shut behind her, not looking away once from the person seated nearest to her.

She had things she was going to say, words she ran over and perfected in her head again and again over the long trek here, but she can’t even begin to find them now, because staring up at her, wearing a broken mask, his one visible green eye blown wide, is-

“ _Duckling?_ ” She’s sure her voice comes out a little pitchy with shock, shaking in her throat, a hundred different things suddenly battling for dominance in her chest.

“ _Duckling_ ,” Techno repeats under his breath in a tone so quietly gleeful it sounds like Christmas and his birthday have come at once. Puffy barely hears him. Her eyes are still on Dream, staring at her like he’s seen a ghost; as soon as she speaks, he spooks a little, glances away like he doesn’t want to meet her eyes.

He needs a haircut, she notices. It’s a stupid thing to notice. But- it’s longer than she’s ever seen it, unwashed and messy, growing over his ears.

It’s been awhile, since she’s seen him.

He opens his mouth, closes it again, wets his lips. “…Puffy.” He still isn’t meeting her eyes.

It’s only one word, but it’s enough to jar loose the jam of words tangled up inside her chest, and once they start coming she can’t stop them. “Wh- what are you- what are you _doing here?_ ” she half-shrieks, distantly aware she sounds a little hysterical, barely aware at all that Techno and Philza and Ranboo are all still present and listening. “You’re supposed to be in _jail_ \- did you- did Sam- oh my god, did something happen to Sam? How did you- _what?_ ”

Dream is still not looking at her, and it strikes her, all at once, that she’s never spoken to him while being able to see his eyes before. Without his mask to shield them, he’s nearly an open book; even with his gaze averted, the caution and desperate discomfort on his face are easy to read.

He looks much more human, like this.

“Sam’s- fine,” he says eventually. “As far as I know. I haven’t seen him. It’s, um. It’s a long story.”

“I would _really like to hear it!_ ” Puffy says, making an active and not terribly successful effort to wrangle her voice under control.

“Hey, can you two keep it down a little?” Techno says, sounding flatly unimpressed, before frowning down at his hand of cards. “Ranboo, d’you got any fives?”

Ranboo startles badly enough to bang both legs on the table, jerking his gaze away from Puffy and Dream with what looks like a tremendous force of effort to glance over at Techno, then down at his cards, then back at Techno. “Um- no. Um. Go fish.”

Techno makes a faintly irritated noise, reaches over and picks up a card from the middle of the table. “Fine. Your turn.”

“Um.” Ranboo stares down at his hand like if he looks at it hard enough, he can forget about Puffy’s presence completely. “Nines?”

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” Techno says, and drops two cards onto the table in front of Ranboo, who immediately grabs two others out of his hand and collects all four into a neat stack.

“Is that another win?” Philza asks.

Ranboo nods, a distinctively anxious, bouncy gesture, folding too-long fingers together nervously over his piles of cards. “Mhm.”

“This is ridiculous,” Techno mutters, moving to start gathering the cards for another round even as he says it. He glances up at Puffy, giving her a brief, assessing look that cuts right through her far worse than the winter wind outside ever could, and she carefully does not flinch or waver. “If you’re not gonna leave, either sit down and help me beat this guy or start payin’ rent, okay.”

Puffy blinks a couple times, and then sits down at the table next to Dream, and watches in vague bemusement as Techno deals her a small pile of cards.

She’d imagined a lot of scenarios during the long trek here through the snow and cold, from Technoblade not being here at all to him running her through with a sword for trespassing before she could even get a word out. This… is nothing like any of them. Not even close.

She has questions. She has- _so_ many questions. She’s _going_ to get that so-called long story out of Dream, because she needs to know how he’s here and why and if he’s going to _hurt_ anyone else- and she still does need to ask Techno for his help with Bad and the egg, and what is _Ranboo_ doing here-

But the fireplace is crackling and warm, and Technoblade is muttering something about _protagonist luck_ while Philza laughs at him and Ranboo snickers nervously behind a hand. Dream had twitched a little when she sat down next to him, but hadn’t shifted away- she can see him, behind his broken mask, keeping a careful eye on her.

She can work with this, she thinks, and picks up her hand.

* * *

Some hours and seven hands of Go Fish later, Puffy catches sight of the clock and jumps, aware all at once of the lateness of the hour. She must have lost track of time completely, caught up as she’d been and still was between the anxiety of asking Techno for help, the shock of Dream’s presence, and then the sheer overall unexpectedness of the situation.

“Oh- I have to _go_ ,” she says, pushing herself to her feet and shoving her latest winning pile of books into a heap.

“What,” Technoblade says, voice flat and absolutely disapproving, and she freezes in place, until, “You can’t just _leave_ after trouncing us all _seven times in a row,_ ” and Puffy can exhale again.

“I- I _do_ , though! I mean, I have to! I have things to do, back in the city,” she says, and feels stupid for how apologetic she feels. She doesn’t actually really _want_ to leave this comfortable little room full of monsters, with its card games and its crackling fireplace, and she can’t put words to exactly why.

“I can’t believe _Puffy_ has a better win rate than me,” Dream mutters.

“So does Ranboo,” Philza points out. Dream shoots him a glare, which goes ignored.

Puffy snickers before she can help herself, has to actively stomp down an impulse to reach down and ruffle his hair. “Aw, don’t feel bad, Duckling! I got lucky, that’s all.” She hesitates, then glances over at Technoblade. “But- about the Egg-“

Techno waves a hand. “Yeah, sure, I’ll help you out, sounds fun. It’s been like a month since I’ve overthrown anything, I was getting kind of bored anyways. More importantly, though- you _gotta_ come back for cards again. You can’t just walk away with a hundred percent win rate, okay, my pride just won’t allow it.”

And all three of the people who bombed L’Manburg down to bedrock are sitting in this room, and even if Puffy needs Techno’s help, even if she still cares about Dream no matter how hard she’s tried to claw him out of her heart, she really shouldn’t even consider it, not when she still remembers the look on Tubbo’s face when she’d stepped through that portal, not when she still remembers the rasping, empty hissing of the Withers.

She shouldn’t.

But Dream still lets her call him Duckling, and maybe there’s something here that can still be fixed.

“I think I can probably find the time,” she says, keeping an eye on Dream, watching for his reaction. His shoulders tighten just a little and he keeps his eyes averted, and it’s still so _novel_ , to be able to see his eyes at all.

“Um,” Ranboo says, tugging anxiously at his jacket cuffs, and he twitches when she looks over at him. “Um. You won’t- um. Don’t tell anyone I’m here? Or- that Dream is here, either. Please.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s gotta be, like, a condition of us working together,” Techno confirms before she can respond. “So far as you’re concerned, Phil and Ranboo ain’t here, okay? Don’t get ‘em involved in anything unless they decide they want in. Dream’s fair game, though, I don’t care about him, feel free to sell _him_ out.” He pauses, then adds thoughtfully, “Might actually be pretty fun if they showed up here to try to drag him back…”

“Might make a mess of your place, though, mate,” Philza notes mildly.

“ _True_ ,” Techno concedes before looking back at Puffy. “Well? We got a deal?”

“We do,” Puffy agrees, and looks at Dream, and before she can think better of it, “My lips are sealed.”

“Fan _tas_ tic,” Techno says. Puffy extends a hand over the table, and he shakes it, grinning bloodthirsty and dangerous, all tusks and fangs.

She should be frightened, maybe, and there’s still uncertainty whispering in the back of her mind, memories of building a flag at the bottom of a crater with shaking hands, of looking down a long blackstone hallway with neatly labeled places for everyone’s most precious things-

But today feels like a beginning, if in a strange and upside-down kind of way, and it’s been so very long since she’s had one of those.

She wants to see where it goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in regards to recent canon events (that is, monday's lore), it's worth noting that this story was conceived and mostly written over the course of february, and, as we noted in the tags, diverges from canon between bad and sapnap's prison visits. just... for clarity's sake.


	3. Grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter: panic attacks, depersonalization, weird metaphysical self-harm, discussed/past kinda everything about pandora's vault

Phil is making fried eggs one morning when the door slams open to Dream, looking outraged.

“ _Why,_ ” says Dream, glowering, as Ranboo half-ducks behind Techno and Techno looks up from page several hundred something of the _Mahabharata,_ “is there a _chest_ in my _house?_ ”

“I don’t know,” answers Phil, one eye on his eggs. “Not sure why it’s a problem, though, mate. Chests are supposed to go in houses.”

Techno barks laugher, and Dream whirls on him. ”Was it _you?_ ”

Techno snorts. “Why would _I_ give you some of my own hard-earned wood?”

Dream shrugs. “If you knew it would irritate me.”

“Eh,” says Techno, as Phil slips his eggs onto his plate. Then something vicious and gleeful lights his eyes. " _That said,_ since you guessed wrong, I think you gotta keep it.”

“Wh—” says Dream.

“Yours now,” says Techno.

“Y-yeah,” adds Ranboo, still half-behind Techno, in an obvious attempt at Techno’s tone, and his voice only shakes a little. “Yours now!”

“I—” starts Dream. “Okay, sure, whatever, you’re giving me a chest.”

He throws his hands up and storms back out.

There’s five seconds of silence, and then Phil bursts into laughter so hard he almost drops his plate.

Techno gives him a sideways glance, then reaches up and claps Ranboo on what would have been the shoulder if he could reach that high sitting down. As it is, he hits Ranboo’s elbow instead. “You put in the chest, right?”

Ranboo nods. “It, um, has a sapling in it.” Techno raises an eyebrow, and Ranboo knits his hands together. “I didn’t expect him to get mad? I just, I felt kinda bad for him. All he has is dirt… He’s not even stealing my stuff. I kinda expected him to take my stuff.”

“Weird,” says Techno. “If I weren’t rich, _I’d_ take your stuff.”

“Thanks,” says Ranboo, deadpan. Phil laughs again.

“I think this was a great idea, though, Ranboo,” adds Techno. Phil puts his plate down on the table and goes to grab a fork. “Free entertainment, _and_ a convenient garbage disposal. Phil, Ranboo, got any junk lying around we can dump on him?”

“Um,” says Ranboo. “I’ve got cobble?”

“Curse of Vanishing fishing rod,” contributes Phil.

Techno grins. “ _Now_ we’re talking. Can’t wait to see what Puffy’s got to offer when she’s next by!”

(“Where did you even _find_ a _silk touch gold hoe?_ ” complains Dream some days later, waving the thing around, and this time Techno grins toothy and proud and Ranboo doesn’t even try to hide his giggles.)

* * *

The first Dream knows of the visitor is when Ranboo grabs him by the hood without warning and yanks him around the side of his own house, ducking down to hide the both of them behind the shoddy dirt wall. It’s purely unexpected enough that by the time he’s processed it enough to react, Ranboo’s already let go. As soon as he’s gathered his breath again Dream whips around to glare at him, opens his mouth to snap, “ _What_ was _that_ -“

“ _Shhh!_ ”

Ranboo is practically kneeling to keep his frankly ridiculous height concealed behind the low wall, and the tension in him is obvious to see, shoulders tight and hands clenched into anxious fists. He’s carefully peering over the roof, squinting out across the morning brightness of the tundra.

“Someone’s coming,” he says, barely a murmur, and his voice is tight. “Not Phil or Techno or Puffy. I spotted them when I went to get wood.”

…Ah.

Dream stills and follows Ranboo’s line of sight out over the snowy plains, running through the old mental checklist from manhunt days mostly out of habit- _can they see me? can they hear me? can i take them in a fight?_

He hates to admit it, but the answer to the last is almost certainly ‘no’ no matter _who_ the visitor is- he can see them now, approaching across the tundra, and even before they draw close enough for him to read their nameplate, the purple-grey gleam of enchanted netherite is unmistakable. He’s tackled high odds before, of course, but- if the stakes are a return to Pandora’s Vault, he can’t even risk it.

He can’t.

The visitor draws nearer, steadily approaching Techno’s house, and Dream can finally make them out.

It’s Bad.

The last time Dream saw Bad was when he came to visit him in Pandora’s Vault. The time before that was when he stepped through the portal with Punz and Sam and all the rest to put him there. He has no idea what Bad would do if he saw him here, and he’s not exactly eager to find out. He _really_ hates to admit it, even to himself, but Ranboo had probably made a very good call in dragging him behind cover.

Especially because-

It’s not _just_ that that’s setting him on edge, not just the complicated history between them and the ever-present quiet threat of reimprisonment hanging at the back of his mind. Something else is wrong, something vaguely, unhappily familiar that pricks unpleasantly at his skin. He can’t place it, but it makes him feel almost a little nauseous.

Bad gives a curious look to Dream’s pathetic little house as he passes, and another to Ranboo’s little lean-to, but doesn’t stop to investigate either, instead heading straight for Techno’s front door.

“What is he _doing_ here,” Ranboo is muttering to himself under his breath, stressed and frantic, eyes fixed on Bad as he approaches Techno’s door. There’s an oddly low, shaky note to his voice, and he sounds like he's forgotten Dream can hear him. “What is he doing here- what’s he _doing_ here- is he looking for Dream? Is he looking for Puffy?”

Puffy?

Dream elbows Ranboo to get his attention, ignoring the way he startles. “Why would he be looking for Puffy?” he hisses under his breath.

“What? Oh- ah- um, because of the- because of the egg thing, remember?” Ranboo manages after a moment of startled stammering. “The thing Techno is helping her with. Bad is, you know- he’s the one who’s, um. Controlling that? I guess? Or... I don’t know. Um. He’s on all the propaganda.”

_Propaganda?_

The creeping discomfort that Dream sometimes feels when he starts to think he’s missed something crucial is welling up in the pit of his stomach. He remembers about the egg, distantly- that had been awhile ago, but he hasn’t forgotten the sick sort of feeling it had emanated, the way it made his skin crawl with _wrong wrong bad wrong red_.

He and Sam- _he’s not thinking about Sam right now_ \- had wanted to get rid of it, but Bad hadn’t wanted them to, and he’d been preoccupied enough at the time with the prison, with dealing with Tommy in exile, with L’Manburg and its new president, that he hadn’t really been willing to bother with it. Not when there were so many more important things to keep in order.

He’s starting to think that might have been a very big mistake.

There’s something _wrong_ in the air, wrapped around Bad’s shoulders like a cloak or a noose, and it’s not quite visible, but Dream’s always been good at looking through to the truth of things. Bad climbs the stairs to Techno’s porch and knocks on the door, his back safely turned to them, and Dream frowns and props himself up on his roof with his elbows to get a better look. He needs to see.

He tips his head a little to the side and _looks_ , and the world bends into lines of light and code, and-

_-red red red red sick sick sick sick red red red RED RED RED REDREDRED-_

-there’s something awful and grasping twisted up inside Bad, in the heart and bones of him, strangling the life and color out of him and curled up like a parasite inside his skull, and he can _see_ it, and he can see the way it twists and snakes down into the soul of the world, _his world_ , and-

-and he can place it all at once, the nausea welling up in his throat and unbalancing him on his feet, because he’s felt it every single time the world’s kicked him back to the center of his stupid fifty-pace prison, a constant background radiation of sickness and pain, and he had barely even been able to pick it out amongst all the other hurts, then, but now that he’s really _seeing_ it and seeing the wreckage it’s made of one of his oldest friends he can’t _stop_ seeing it, and-

“ _Dream!_ ”

He’s sitting.

He doesn’t remember sitting down, but he’s sitting, back against the wall and fingers in the dirt and grass, blinking _red red red_ out of his eyes to see Ranboo, looking almost _concerned_ , which Dream can’t even _begin_ to try and make sense of, not right now while he’s still tasting bile at the back of his throat.

“Um,” Ranboo is saying, a disbelieving note in his voice, like he’s not quite sure what he’s saying, what he’s seeing. “Are you… okay?”

Dream gives himself another second to catch his breath, and then he’s pulling himself to his feet. He’s wobbly, still, embarrassingly so, and Ranboo has to catch him by the elbow to keep him from tumbling to the ground all over again.

Dream ignores him, twisting around to look back over the roof at Techno’s house, supporting himself against the low wall. “Is he still here? Is he-”

“He left,” Ranboo says. “While you were having your, um. Uh.” He makes a vague, wavy gesture by his head. “What- um. What was that?”

“Nothing,” Dream says, and the lie comes easily but he can read on Ranboo’s face how unconvincing it must be even before he says anything.

“Must’ve, um. Must’ve been a lot of nothing.”

“Shut up,” Dream says, which is not the most cutting comeback of his life, but it does the trick, because Ranboo shuts up. It doesn’t feel like a win, though, not when he’s still feeling nauseous and can’t seem to stop his hands from trembling.

He needs-

He doesn’t know what he needs, other than to be _out_ of this tiny circle, to be able to go and uproot the tumor that’s been sickening his world with his bare hands if he has to, to crush it to dust or burn it to ash. But he _can’t_. Fifty blocks east, fifty blocks west, fifty blocks north, fifty blocks south.

He’s trapped here, and his world is sick in a way he can’t ignore anymore, and he can’t _do_ anything about it. It’s the helplessness that rankles the most, he thinks. He _hates_ being powerless.

He needs- to talk to someone, he thinks. He needs to know what’s been going on.

And he needs to know what’s happened to Bad.

* * *

The moon is high, and there’s still some residual sickness clinging to Dream’s stomach as he crosses the snowy yard to Ranboo’s house, tracking footprints through the snow. He doesn’t bother to knock before letting himself in, unlatching the gate and closing it again behind him.

This is something Dream and Ranboo have in common: sleep is a human thing, and so it evades them both.

Ranboo is sitting on his bed, awake, quiet and unnaturally still. He looks up at Dream’s entrance, green and red eyes bright in the darkness, and tilts his head a little, inquisitive. He doesn’t startle or twitch, or yell like he would if Dream came into his house unannounced when he was awake- Dream only ever sees this sort of bone-deep calmness from him when he’s asleep.

“Hey, Ranboo,” Dream says, taking a seat on one of the nearby chests.

“Dream,” Ranboo says evenly, the low, hollow sort of echo that he always seems to have when he’s sleepwalking humming in his voice. He sounds like he might be smiling a little, but Dream always has trouble reading him, like this.

“How’s it going?”

“I’m fine,” Ranboo says, mild and a little detached. “How are you?”

And it’s funny, because Dream can’t actually remember the last time anyone asked him that. He swallows back the sudden discomfort in his throat and the lingering feeling of _bad-wrong-sick-sick-red_ , leans forward a little. “Actually, that’s what I’m hoping to find out,” he says. “Can you help me with something?”

“Always,” Ranboo agrees easily, and Dream could have him do anything, if he wanted. Burn homes, start wars, bloody his hands for any reason at all-

But what would be the point, when he can’t even _leave_?

What he says, instead, is, “Tell me what’s happening outside.”

One of Ranboo’s ears flicks, the only outward reaction he gives. “Outside?”

“In the world. Just- everything you know.”

Ranboo is quiet for a moment, and Dream feels an irrational, panicky spike of uncertainty that maybe he’ll refuse, even though Ranboo’s never refused him anything, not when he’s like this; maybe this time, when he really truly _needs_ to know, when he has no other avenue to turn to, Ranboo won’t tell him anything at all, that maybe this last scrap of power is gone as well-

Ranboo says, “Where should I start?” and Dream can breathe again.

He almost asks about Tommy.

Instead, he says, “Start with the Egg.”

“It keeps growing,” Ranboo says after a moment. “I see it everywhere. It’s always spreading. The L’Manburg crater is full of it. There are propaganda posters everywhere saying to join it, and love it.” A brief pause, and then: “I don’t like it.”

 _Sick sick sick red red redredred_ \- “How much has it spread?” Dream asks, and tries not to sound too desperate, even though he knows Ranboo won’t notice or care. “How far?”

Ranboo makes a minute gesture that might be a shrug. “In the city, it’s everywhere.”

Dream swallows, and for a moment feels like he can’t breathe, a tangle of vines wrapping around his lungs and _squeezing_ , and maybe he can’t. The sick feeling from earlier today still hasn’t fully faded, the jarring nausea that had hit him like a fist when he’d looked and _looked_ through Bad at the sickness nested in his head and twisted around his bones.

He hasn’t quite stopped feeling it, and what’s more, he’s not sure when he _started_ , either, because this creeping sort of sickness isn’t _new_ , he’s figured out; he’s just only now gotten a name to put on it, has only now figured how to pick it out from the constant background radiation of hurt and illness and grief. The world’s own sickness, turning his stomach and poisoning his veins.

The thing, the thing, the thing about Dream and the world is that they are, have ever been, will ever be two halves of a whole. Ruler and realm, Dream the world’s voice and hands, the world Dream’s bones and blood.

And the ruler of a realm has responsibilities.

Should he fail them-

He raises fingers almost unconsciously to trace the broken edge of his mask, remembers porcelain and bone shattering under the axe’s cleaving edge, remembers choking out a noise that was half pleading and half shock between mouthfuls of blood.

-there are consequences.

He’s not supposed to be able to die in the way that matters. And there isn’t supposed to be a creeping, insidious thing choking the life out of his world and his people, and he’s not supposed to be sitting here, trapped and pitifully weak, questioning someone else just to learn the state of affairs in his own world, and he’s supposed to be _in control_ \- and yet, and yet, and yet, here he is.

Here he is.

“What- what about Tommy?” he asks, all at once desperate to think about anything else, and his voice rasps a little unevenly in his throat.

Ranboo tilts his head, either unbothered by or oblivious to the break in his voice. “What about Tommy?”

“What’s he doing? You know- what’s he up to?” Because there’s always something, there has to be something, Tommy’s always making trouble, always stirring things up- “Causing problems, I’m sure-”

“Not really,” Ranboo says. “He’s building a hotel.”

Dream blinks.

“A hotel?” he echoes, and then, a little stupidly, “Tommy sucks at building.”

“Sam is building it,” Ranboo says, and Dream doesn’t flinch, he _doesn’t_. “Tommy’s collecting the materials.”

“…He hates grinding, too.” Dream frowns, waiting for more, but Ranboo doesn’t say anything else, so he prompts, “…Well? What else?”

“What else,” Ranboo repeats, not seeming to comprehend.

“What else is Tommy doing?”

“Nothing.”

“What- there must be _something_ ,” Dream says, unable to keep the incredulous edge out of his voice. “Starting some war, or- stealing someone’s things, or- I don’t know. _Something_.”

Ranboo makes a little humming sound. “No, he’s just building.”

“What- that doesn’t- no, that’s not right. Tommy- Tommy makes problems, it’s what he _does_. He’s not just- he’s never just _content_ , he’s never just _building_ \- that’s not how it _works_ ,” Dream finally manages.

Ranboo doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, red-green eyes luminous in the darkness, like _Dream_ is the one being slow here, like _Dream_ is the forgetful one talking half-asleep. He wonders if Ranboo is just mistaken- he’s _asleep_ , after all, he can’t be the most airtight source of information- and Ranboo has never, ever been anything but reliable, at least like this, but-

“You must’ve forgotten,” Dream decides. “You must- yeah. You must’ve forgotten.”

“Maybe,” Ranboo agrees, sounding unbothered either way, and for some reason it puts needles under Dream’s skin. Because Ranboo doesn’t get it, he _has_ to be mistaken, he _has_ to have forgotten, because if he’s right, that means-

He doesn’t know, exactly, what it means, if there’s peace now that he’s gone, if the greatest threat left is a sickness of the world that he ignored and left to fester.

Or maybe he does, and he just doesn’t want to think about it.

“Never mind,” he says, pushing himself to his feet, fumbling for the gate latch. Ranboo’s house is too small, all of a sudden. He needs the sky over his head, all of a sudden. “Never- never mind. I’m leaving. This was- stupid.”

“Goodnight, Dream,” Ranboo says, calm and unreadable, and all at once Dream hates him, a little. At least when Ranboo’s awake, he reacts- at least when Ranboo’s awake, he jumps when Dream glares at him, fiddles anxiously with his hands whenever he’s near. When Ranboo’s awake, Dream is someone who has power, and something to be feared.

When Ranboo’s asleep, he’s just the nearest thing Dream has left to a friend, and maybe Dream hates him for it.

Dream doesn’t reply, and closes the gate with a little too much force behind him as he goes.

* * *

Sam can honestly say that whatever he’d expected from the prisoner’s hideout, it wasn’t this.

When Puffy had told him, _I know where he is, I know where to find him,_ Sam had thought she would lead him to some unmarked cave somewhere, to a lost little place, or, with the more uncharitable parts of his brain, to some secret basement beneath her house.

That last one had been discarded as soon as she showed him into the wilderness, and thankfully so, because Sam hadn’t really liked his options if it turned out Puffy was harboring his prisoner under her house. But they’ve been walking so long he really is starting to think he’d been right, when—

That’s _Technoblade’s_ house. He’s never seen it before, but the descriptions line up, and there isn’t anyone else who’d build a house this far out in the middle of nowhere and then be obsessive enough to make sure it looks nice to visitors. Certainly it can’t be the prisoner’s house: he’d never been a dedicated builder, Before. Not alone. And Sam hates to disrespect a destroyed structure, but the Community House had been… ugly.

He glances at Puffy, who stopped when he did, hands at her sides, and he says, “He’s hiding out in _Technoblade’s_ house?”

“Um, not quite,” says Puffy. “Techno’d murder him immediately,” she adds, which is probably true, but when did she get close enough with Technoblade to shorten his name?

She points, then, at a small lump of dirt set between Technoblade’s house and some other ramshackle little building. It’s got a door inset on the front, swinging open, and no other features, and in front of it sits the prisoner.

From this distance, the prisoner is little more than a green-and-white smudge against the snow and the dead grasses, impossibly free. He hasn’t noticed them yet.

“Remember,” says Puffy. Her voice is nervous, and subdued, but her back is straight. “You promised.”

“I remember,” confirms Sam. _I’ll take you to him,_ Puffy had told him, standing well out of sword-range and speaking in a whisper, _but please— promise me you’ll try talking to him first._ “But I have a responsibility to the people of this world.”

Her eyes flick to _Warden’s Will_ belted at his waist, and she nods, regal, and she says, “I know.”

And she leads him onward.

When Sam had first found the prisoner gone from his cell, it had been nearly a week since he’d last checked in. The prisoner had thrown his clock in the lava again, Bad had told him, and Sam had seen no reason to give him a new one. Perhaps that would teach him to value the privileges Sam allowed him.

And Sam had had a busy week otherwise, what with all the other concerns out in the world, what with the Egg, what with new little nations and their politics, so he’d trusted in his masterwork, in his beautiful unbreakable prison, his Pandora’s Vault. And then, a week later, he’d walked into the cell to find it perfectly intact and the prisoner vanished.

So of course he’d assumed the prisoner was dead.

Pandora’s Vault is perfect, and inescapable except by canon, final death. These are facts that Sam knows, that Sam made true in his construction of it, and so the only way the prisoner could have be gone is if one of his endless attempts at swimming in lava finally stuck and Sam just— missed it.

And before he could stop it, grief had clawed its ancient twisting way unbidden into his throat, despite everything. And he’d stood there in the cell for a length of time he had no way to measure, until he’d taught himself all over again how to stop mourning.

So when Puffy had come to him and told him the prisoner was alive, he'd felt a rush of shameful choking relief, and then the relief had transformed water-quick into rage. He feels that again, now, as he walks up to the place the prisoner has escaped to, the quickly-smothered grief and the abiding fury. After all he has done, the prisoner does not deserve grief, or sympathy, or a name, no matter how he laughs in Sam’s memories.

Twenty paces away, the prisoner finally looks up from the blade of grass he’s been shredding and sees them.

His one visible eye widens frantically, and his mouth falls slightly open, and he glances between Sam and Puffy like a man betrayed, and then he’s stumbling backwards with the jagged movement of a panicked animal, into the dark pile of dirt Puffy implied was his house. Sam nods once to Puffy, and follows.

The house… isn’t even a house, really. There’s one torch in the center of the floor. One chest along the left wall. No bed. Dirt floor, dirt wall, dirt roof. And the prisoner pressed up against the far corner, shaking.

Sam stands in the doorway, and looks at him, and for a long moment the prisoner looks back.

Sam had expected defiance. Sam had expected rage, and defiance, and having to drag him back in chains. He had expected fear, perhaps, but the fear of a god caught mortal, or the fear of a monster at swordpoint. Not this cornered-animal skittishness like nothing he’s ever seen from him before, not even brought down and at Sam’s mercy, in his cell.

 _Promise me you’ll try talking to him,_ Puffy had said. Sam doesn’t know how he’s supposed to _start,_ when every script he’s written in his head is useless, not when the prisoner’s eye is blown wide and startled so far from Sam’s place of power.

“Awesome,” says the prisoner finally, and the old nickname twists at something Sam keeps buried deep in his gut, like it does every time. Like he knows the prisoner intends for it to do.

But _oh,_ he’s so glad the prisoner spoke first.

“Prisoner,” says Sam back, and the prisoner _flinches._ “You shouldn’t have escaped,” he continues, focused on keeping his tone perfectly level. “You’ll be coming back with me now, and I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you for your misbehavior.”

“I can’t—” says the prisoner. He licks dry lips, twice, and his exposed eye flickers around the room. “I can’t leave. I can’t leave!” He smiles for one split, triumphant second, and then his mouth flattens and he puts his hand on his mask and presses himself further into the wall. “I can’t leave. I can’t leave I can’t leave I can’t leave.”

 _He can’t leave; it’s impossible,_ Puffy had told him, and he hadn’t quite believed her. Captain Puffy is a lot of things, noble and honorable and compassionate, but she is also a relative newcomer to this world, and more fairly disposed towards the prisoner than most, and that newness and that fairness would blind her to the lies in the shadows of his words, the broken promises in the bindings of them.

He still doesn’t quite believe her, doesn’t quite believe him— but he’s never seen the prisoner this pulled apart, and for all that he steels himself against an elaborate act, he finds that the rawness of it is more convincing than any half-smile.

So out of curiosity, he asks, “Well, prisoner, are you going to tell me how you escaped?”

And he doesn’t expect an answer, because why would the prisoner tell him, and he does, because the prisoner has always loved to gloat, and he doesn’t, because the prisoner is shaking against a dirt wall, and he does, because it would hurt Sam to learn the flaws in his perfect creation, and the prisoner takes joy in pain.

And the prisoner stares at him, and stares at him, with that spruce-green eye, hands in his tattered hoodie pocket, mask pushed up uncomfortably against the wall, and just when Sam is about to give up the question as pointless and drag him out of the room by force, the prisoner says, “Do you remember DreamXD?”

And the problem is, Sam _does._ He remembers the earliest days of the server, two identical masked shadows, one silent and the other gifted with a silver tongue, one something like a human and the other a god wearing that human’s shape. He remembers the human’s triumph when the god finished teaching it to teleport, and he remembers the god’s befuddlement at having hands, and then he grabs blindly for the hilt of _Warden’s Will_ and stops himself remembering.

Because he knows what the prisoner’s words can do; he’s seen them take down nations and tear people apart into dust and scraps. He knows what the prisoner did with them, to Tommy in exile, to Tubbo, to Ranboo, to everyone he touched. He knows. He knows, and he can’t let them touch him. Not even if _-do you remember-_ not even if the memories they bring up stir the grief he keeps settled at the bottom of his heart.

Especially not then, because one needs to be cold and hard and ruthless to keep a monster in its cage.

The prisoner flinched again when Sam put his hand on his sword.

“I remember,” says Sam, and his voice is calm and cold and steady.

“Then,” says the prisoner, and his breathing is short, and he is still with a hunted rabbit’s stillness, and he is staring fixedly at Sam, unblinking. His mask is crooked from shoving into the wall, exposing even more of his face than before, and his hair is dirt-speckled. It’s unnerving. He’s always been short, but he’s never been made small, not like this, not even at Sam’s mercy in his cell. He twitches, and the mask shifts a little more.

Sam has often wondered why he let him keep that mask. But it was already cracked and useless when Sam took him into custody, and what is left of it has spent weeks as a shield against any aspirations of sympathy, against any reminders of that humanity the prisoner lost any right to when he took a child into the wilderness and kept him there as a thing to take apart.

And, and, Sam realizes in fear, it’s losing its potency. The prisoner never shook like this, in his cell.

“Then?” he repeats, when the prisoner doesn’t keep speaking.

“Then,” repeats the prisoner back, and his eye is still wide with terror, and his stillness is broken by sudden irregular tremors, “then you know it could do it. DreamXD. Take me out of my cell.”

He does, and he hates how plausible an explanation it is. Pandora’s Vault is a perfect prison, and escapable only by death or by omnipotent god. He never thought he would have to deal with the second, not when that god hadn’t been seen with the prisoner in months, not when he thought it would know enough to want to leave him there, but the prisoner isn’t dead, and the cell is intact, and the two of them had always been inseparable, so there really is only one option left.

“You can’t take me back,” announces the prisoner, and it’s probably supposed to sound triumphant, but his voice is weak and thin, so instead it sounds like he’s begging.

And— that in itself should be a triumph for Sam, but it doesn’t feel like one, not with the prisoner dirt-stained and shaking. Nothing is going how it should, today. It’s unnerving.

“It trapped me here it won’t let me leave,” the prisoner continues, taking his hands out of his hoodie pocket and digging them into the wall, and with every panicked word Sam finds himself, against all his better judgment, believing him more. “You know it can you can’t take me back it trapped me here I’m stuck here you can’t take me back.”

Pause. Assess. Don’t make rash decisions. The prisoner is still repeating himself, those same words over and over as he tries to shrink further into the wall. Sam can’t trust him. Sam _can’t_ trust him, no matter how pulled-apart he’s become. Plan of action, plan of action. He’ll confirm all this about being trapped with Puffy, and then figure out the next step. Okay.

He draws _Warden’s Will._ The prisoner jumps, and shuts up. Sam takes a step back from the doorway, and uses the tip of the sword to draw a line there in the dirt, the prisoner following with his eyes.

“Stay,” says Sam. He doesn’t need to add anything; the sword is threat enough, and he waits until the prisoner gives him what might be a tiny nod or might just be another flinch, and he turns away slowly to look for Puffy.

She’s a short distance away, far enough to give the illusion of privacy but close enough to interfere if needed, and Sam has to admire her tact. And she’s also not looking at him. Instead, her head is turned towards the third little building on the property, and coming out the door of it is _Ranboo,_ a basket of bread hanging off one elbow. And Ranboo is stepping up to Puffy and offering her the basket, and _he lives here._ He lives here, doesn’t he?

A conversation in Pandora’s Vault’s entrance hall, Ranboo begging Sam to never ever ever no matter the circumstances let him visit the prisoner.

He lives here. The prisoner is, by all accounts, stuck here.

“Ranboo!” says Sam, before he can reconsider, and Ranboo _freezes_ as Puffy throws herself in front of him and Sam sprints up to the two of them. “Ranboo.”

Ranboo is trying to hide between Puffy, which isn’t working on account of him being at least two feet taller than her. But Puffy’s eyes are blazing. “You’re here for Dream, not Ranboo,” she says, and the hand she places on her sword reminds him that he still has _Warden’s Will_ in his own grip. “What do you want with Ranboo?”

Sam blinks at her, and then belatedly sheathes his sword. “To see if he’s okay?” he answers. He gestures at the prisoner’s little dirt house with his head. “Considering.”

“Oh,” says Puffy. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” echoes Ranboo, and unfolds himself from behind her. “I, um. Thought. Assumed.”

Sam waves off the apologies and says, to both of them, “The prisoner says he’s trapped here? Can you confirm.”

Ranboo nods once, sharply, and Puffy says, “Yeah, I _told_ you. Duckling can’t leave.”

And he guesses that will have to do. Because none of the three of them are totally trustworthy on matters like this, and he’d much rather have empirical truth, but Puffy is honest and the prisoner is in pieces, and Ranboo is… well. Sam folds his hands together. “Ranboo,” he asks, and gestures again at the little dirt house, “are you okay with this?”

Ranboo opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then opens it again, and then closes it again, and then glances at Puffy, and glances at Technoblade’s house, and glances at the prisoner’s little dirt house, and glances at Sam. And he blinks nervously, and he says, “Um. Maybe?” He shuffles his feet. “I’m still figuring it out.”

Puffy grins. “Ranboo’s great at Go Fish,” she says, which doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but which makes Ranboo’s cheeks crinkle into what must be a smile beneath his facemask, so maybe Sam has to make do with that, too.

“You’re better,” says Ranboo back.

“Maybe! Really I just get lucky,” says Puffy. She considers. “We’re both better than Duckling, though.”

Ranboo rolls his eyes. “He’s convinced you cheat, you know.”

“I don’t!”

“Well, duh,” says Ranboo. “But try telling that to him and Techno. They have a _conspiracy._ Hey, are you staying for cards tonight? We can catch them at it.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” admits Puffy. “But I wasn’t planning on anything else, either, and it sounds pretty fun.” She turns to Sam, and adds, “Hey, Sam, you can find your own way home, right? Change of plans, I’m staying for dinner.”

And— They have _lives._ They have lives, where they play children’s card games with the monster Sam is supposed to be keeping locked up. And the monster loses those card games, and they laugh about it, and come back for more. And they aren’t dead, or in tears, or alone against him.

Maybe making do with this won’t go so badly. Maybe there’s something in the air here, this far north, that turns monsters into humans again.

“I can,” confirms Sam, as he marvels.

“Awesome!” says Puffy, and hands him a loaf of bread from the basket on her arm. “Here, a snack.”

“Um, have a safe trip back,” adds Ranboo, as Sam wonders if she expects him to just bite into the loaf with his teeth.

“I… will, thanks,” says Sam, looking at them both.

And then he glances over at the tiny prison-cell house, at the prisoner shadowed in the doorway, and he realizes: if he leaves without him, the prisoner is no longer his responsibility. Oh, Sam will stand guard, and stand watchful, but he won’t be the bars and the latch anymore. He won’t be the only thing standing between the world and its end, and he won’t be, he won’t be—

He laughs, he takes a step, he turns around.

"Dream," he says, the name cold and unfamiliar on his tongue, and he watches as the prisoner jumps at the sound, unsteady. "Be good."

And he turns and leaves that monster who was once his friend, and who was once a person, and who was once named Dream, and who might somewhere at the heart of him still be, he leaves that monster to its new keepers, and he trusts that that’s the right thing to do.

* * *

Dream paces.

 _Gonna wear a rut in my grass, Dream,_ Techno complains now and then. _Gonna put a trench right in the middle of my yard. Think of my property value, Dream._

Fifty blocks north, fifty blocks south, fifty blocks east, fifty blocks west. He counts, and then he counts again. Feels out exactly where the boundary is and exactly how close he can get before he crosses it, because it’s not like there’s much else to do, and because-

_-hurt hurt hurt sick sick sick grief and pain and loss and-_

-it’s a little jarring to run into it by mistake.

He paces, because there’s nothing else to do, because there’s nowhere else to go, and because he can’t sit still, not right now, not with residual panic still needling under his skin, not with Sam’s words still ringing around and around and around inside his head, cold and relentless.

_Prisoner. You shouldn’t have escaped._

And he’d never escaped, not really, and that’s the only reason Sam had been _merciful_ enough to leave him here at all, because he’s still imprisoned just as effectively as he’d been inside Pandora’s Vault. And he can’t sit still, and he wants to get out, and he wants to get out, and he _can’t_.

His little prison here is nicer than his cell. He’ll concede that. It’s far nicer than his cell. There are things to touch, if not his own belongings; there are things to see besides flat obsidian walls and the relentless glow of lava. He might not be able to run to the horizon and see what’s beyond it, but at least it’s there at all.

But it’s still too small, and he still can’t leave, and he still kind of hates it.

There’s dirt. There’s snow. A couple iced-over ponds; some cows. Some weeds. Techno’s house; Ranboo’s shack, with its little farm beside.

But it’s mostly snow and dirt.

There’s a patch that’s been dug up and replaced a couple times over, right in front of Ranboo’s house. It’s one of the most interesting things on the property, if only because he knows what used to hide there, in the chest that was once buried, empty, under the foundations.

He remembers finding the messy crater clawed out of the ground here, remembers stepping over Ranboo, hunched and shivering and mumbling incomprehensibly to himself, to retrieve the disc from the chest. Remembers tossing a _thanks_ over his shoulder as he left even though he knew Ranboo couldn’t hear him, or much of anything, probably. He hadn’t really planned on ever coming back here again after that, but, well.

Ranboo is coming back from somewhere, now, crossing back across the snowy field and towards his front door, footsteps crunching slightly in the snow. Dream glares a little at the side of his head; when Ranboo hunches his shoulders and walks faster, he feels a little gratified, but not as much as he expected.

Ranboo pauses at a random spot near his door, and sets down a grass block. He looks at it for a moment, nods in satisfaction, and Dream has to look, too, because there’s nothing else to look at, because at least it’s something new.

It’s just a grass block. It’s nothing. The whole world is carpeted in them.

But-

Before he really knows what he’s doing, he’s stepping over, crouching down to look at it closer, and then tipping his head to _look_ , the code and light behind the fabric of the world, the coordinates of where it came from and where it’s been.

It’s so stupid. It’s just a block of grass. And yet-

“You were in a swamp,” he says.

“Um,” Ranboo says, audibly confused.

Dream doesn’t look up at him. “The one southeast of here. This block is from there.”

He hasn’t been there in months. It’s far off from spawn, but he’d wandered through it in the early days, when he was just exploring, just seeing what there was to see as the world hummed around him with new life. He’s pretty sure he went there with George once to hunt down slime cubes for leads. They’d arrived at the full moon and nearly gotten swarmed.

He hasn’t thought about that in ages.

“Um,” Ranboo says again. “Yeah. I’m just gonna… go…”

He goes. Dream barely notices. The grass on top of the block is a little darker green than the grass around the tundra usually is, beneath the snow, and that’s a stupid thing to fixate on but he does anyways, because he’s never noticed before.

He wonders how that swamp is, these days.

Maybe he’ll ask.

* * *

Dream can't stop thinking.

Normally, he wouldn't mind. Normally, thinking is good, because it means he has something to think about. Except then he was stuck in a cell and then he was stuck in one place, and now his thoughts keep spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and he wants to see something else. He wants to see _anything_ else.

He wants to see that swamp.

He'd asked the world, that night, sitting alone on the half-roof of the pathetic little house he can't believe he's letting people see. Not that he cares what they think of him. It's just getting more and more difficult to inspire fear, like this. More and more difficult to keep any kind of control, and he hates that almost more than anything.

But he'd asked the world, that night, how the swamp was doing. Not in any kind of words, just humming under his breath and touching the dirt roof of that pathetic little house, just reaching for it like taking a hand so familiar you don't even have to look, and he'd asked, like he'd asked so many things so many times and all the more while pinned in place, and in a single beat the world had taken his hand and shown him a single snapshot glimpse.

So he's thinking about that, as the morning sun sends shadows streaking. And he's thinking about the swamp, and he's been thinking for days, around and around in circles, about why the world finally answered him after millions of questions only to show him a swamp, about why the world reached back to him for the first time since it rescued him only to show him a swamp.

And he wants to see the swamp, he wants to _see it_ he saw the trees dripping their ivy he saw the murky water he saw the fish he saw the lily pads for one brief second and the novelty and the memory of it won't stop spinning circles in his mind.

And then the circles of it stop, because he wants to see it, and he's realized how he can.

He drops the blade of grass he's been fiddling with — swamp-grass, dark-grass, traveler-grass — and he jumps off the roof, and the landing shakes his bones, and he runs — _fifteen, thirty, forty-five, fifty —_ straight at the boundary.

_-grief grief grief techno and philza pushing each other off boats grief loss ice spikes spearing through clouds tommy gold-clad steps through the nether polar bears chase foxes chase salmon ravines gape wide-_

He runs at the boundary again.

_-pain pain pain reaching rushing river rushing pain shattered gravel falling puffy waves eret across a river a river thaws in the sun pain-_

He runs at the boundary

_-the egg is heavy heavy pulling pulling pulling choking snow falls rain falls ash falls water falls lava falls burning choking choking agonizing trees chorus plants reach up up up up a single block falls-_

He runs

_-deep ravines coal veins reach and twist vines grab ranboo walks silently past an enderman torchlight torchlight lavalight the PRISON dark heavy parrots sing disksongs-_

He

_-sheep are grazing grazing cropping grass blue sky PAIN a massive hole a massive pit a bleeding wound blue sky ocean blue-green sea pickles shine like stars-_

falls over. He is lying on his back, he is lying on his back, the sun is high in the sky, slanting afternoon, and he looks behind and sees the light and code of it bend around his eyes, he is lying on the ground of his world, his world, he is lying on the ground of it, he could see the whole thing and he is lying on the ground of it, his world all the people all the silverfish all the ferns of it, he'll get up in a moment and see it again, his world his world his beautiful world so wide so wide he can see the whole thing again-

Oh, there's Ranboo. Dark-and-light on the edge of his vision, heavy with ores. He flinches when Dream looks at him — remember that — and then flinches again when Dream smiles and looks back up at the sun.

"I saw you!" Dream tells him, triumphant, and he laughs and he laughs and he laughs. "I saw you, I saw you, deep in the mountain with your pick and your people. I saw you. I saw you!"

And he looks up at the sun until it moves a tick of time, and he realizes Ranboo must have moved on.

That's okay, that's fine. Ranboo can do what he wants, when Dream has more important things to think about. Like the jungle-trees enmeshed, like the skeleton of the community house, like the air above the Badlands.

He pushes himself up on an elbow and then a knee and then his feet, and he stumbles back towards the boundary.

* * *

It’s curiosity, more than anything else, that drives Ranboo to make a conscious effort to hold onto one of the snow-dusted grass blocks he grabs from the mountainside near his latest mine. Normally he just picks them up and sets them down wherever feels right, but this is- an experiment, Tubbo would call it.

Dream has always been a mystery, something dangerous and omnipresent and unpredictable, and Ranboo has always understood him at once far more than he would like to and not at all.

He had wondered, maybe, if living so close together would help with that, if nothing else, but it hasn’t, not yet. If anything, it’s only sharpened the contrast between what makes sense and what doesn’t, because one moment Dream will roll his eyes at Techno and mutter a sullen insult under his breath and seem almost human, and then the next he’s dropping to his knees in the snow and slush to stare unblinking at a single grass block and telling Ranboo exactly where and when he got it from.

He just wants to understand. There’s a _lot_ about Dream he’d like to understand, really, but most of it is questions he can’t even begin to articulate, let alone scrape up the courage to voice aloud- _why me?_ and _doesn’t it hurt?_ and _did you ever care about anyone, really?_ and _why?_ \- so he’s starting with something manageable.

Or at least, that’s the plan. Like most things in Ranboo’s life, it doesn’t go how he wants.

Dream is lying on his back on the ground when Ranboo comes home, crumpled and still, and for a heart-stop moment that might be terror and might be relief and is honestly probably both, Ranboo wonders if he’s dead. Bodies are only left when final lives are lost, after all, and if it’s true that Dream really only does have as many as the rest of them, then he must be on his last.

And then Dream twitches, a little, the first sign of movement Ranboo’s seen from him, and his head rolls over to face Ranboo and-

-and his eyes are so very very green.

They’re green like grass, like deep seawater and treetops and turtleshells, and they’re greener than all of those things, shining fever-bright out of his face like emeralds, _burning_ with something that hurts hurts _h u r t s_ to look at, and Ranboo flinches bodily away from the weight and brightness of them.

Dream is smiling, wide and delirious and _happy_ in a way Ranboo’s never seen before on his face, and it’s so disconcerting he shuffles back another step, even as that heavy and bright and far too green gaze leaves his skin to stare directly at the sun. He can breathe again, but he still feels pinned in place, fascinated and terrified all at once.

“I _saw_ you!” Dream crows, and he’s laughing between the words, jagged and hysterical and so so _bright_ , staring unblinking up at the sun. Ranboo has talked with Dream a lot, by now, both in his head and outside of it, but he’s never, ever heard him sound like this. There’s a note of absolute _joy_ in his voice, joy and wonder and glee all tangled together, that’s somehow much more frightening than all the malice and fury and desperation he’s ever turned on Ranboo put together.

“I saw you,” Dream repeats, laughing half-mad and delighted, and it makes a shudder run down Ranboo’s spine because it sounds _true_ and those _eyes eyes eyes_ and ender he _hates_ being _watched_. “I saw you, deep in the mountains, with your pick and your people! I saw you. I saw you!”

And-

_-stepping past an elder with a nod and a quiet acknowledgement, pick and torch in hand, wandering through the cave system and working his way deep down into the stone into comforting welcoming darkness-_

-and how can he know that? How can he _know_ that? How was he _watching_ \- how was he _there_ -

He’s trembling, he realizes, his whole body shaking. Dream is still laughing, soft and hazy, staring up at the sun like he’s forgotten Ranboo is even there. It must be burning his eyes. He hasn’t blinked once.

If Ranboo was braver than he is, he might ask, might demand answers of _what_ and _why_ and _how how how_ , but he’s always been a coward, and right now he wants nothing more to be out of sight of those eyes that are far too bright and far too green and see far far far too much.

He hurries back to his house, feet unsteady, hands trembling on the door latch, and Dream’s laughter follows him the whole way there.

* * *

The Syndicate base is coming along very nicely, in Techno's esteemed opinion. He'd spent the day there, with Phil, messing around, decorating, and occasionally scheming, and they'd intended to spend longer but Techno forgot to grab enough food to last them the night, so they headed back to the house instead.

Techno doesn’t really mind. They can always come back tomorrow, and really there’s just as much anarchy to do at home, what with how Dream, self-appointed SMP tyrant, spends all his time these days loitering in Techno's backyard. Him and Dream have a great working relationship, in Techno's opinion: Dream sets him up for jokes by being miserable and pathetic, and Techno bullies him mercilessly at every opportunity. They’re a comedy _duo_.

Well, Phil usually laughs, and that’s good enough for Techno.

So they make it back to the house a little after sunset, with the sky still reflecting faintly red off the snow, and Techno is pretty much expecting to spend the evening playing Go Fish, sharpening his axe, and teaching his dear apprentice Ranboo the fine art of ruthless mockery. Life is good, with L'Manberg and their so-called justice out of the way and nobody except Puffy brave enough to bother the four of them out here in the north. Ranboo can make infinite cake, anarchy will soon be ringing across the land, and life is _so_ good. And it’s going to be even better when Techno wins at go fish. Which is going to happen this time. He can tryhard _any_ game. Go Fish is _in the bag_ tonight.

Except when they arrive, Ranboo is nowhere in sight, and there are two Dreams.

Dream Number One is on his hands and knees, that half-broken mask he insists on wearing discarded somewhere in the snow and his eyes gleaming warped forest green, luminous despite the night. Techno wonders if the light of them would prevent mobs from spawning. That'd be useful. He could just sit Dream outside on the porch and save his coal and sticks for worthier projects. Techno's front porch is a much better house than Dream's pathetic dirt hut; he'd be doing the man a favor, really.

As he watches, Dream tries to crawl forward, starts shaking uncontrollably, and collapses flat on his face. So embarrassing.

Techno glances over at Dream Number Two, who looks exactly like Dream Number One except infinitely more dignified and infinitely less covered in dirt. It’s staring intently at Dream Number One from behind its pristine mask, somehow magically managing to project disapproval and disappointment with exactly zero visible eyes and a mouth that doesn’t look like it knows how to move.

Techno blinks. He _recognizes_ that stare.

"You!" he says, pointing. "You're that DreamXD guy who destroyed our cool table!"

Slowly, DreamXD's head turns towards him, a delayed reaction like it’s lagging or like it’s just belatedly remembered you’re supposed to look at people when you talk to them. It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t move. It just stares.

 _And then I put it back,_ it seems to be saying, somehow, despite the fact that it’s just standing there. _You should be grateful._

Techno shuffles his feet and exchanges a glance with Phil, who looks bemused and, to Techno's irritation, less alarmed than Techno personally feels. DreamXD keeps staring.

The problem is, Techno doesn’t know _anything_ about DreamXD. Anyone else in the world, he knows with unshaking conviction he can match in a fight. His closest rival on that front is Dream, who is — Techno angles a quick glance at him — staring at DreamXD with dirt all over his face. Basically a non-issue, at this point. Anyone else in the world, he can fight with a half-broken hoe and win.

But he doesn’t know anything about DreamXD beyond what he'd seen the last time he met it, which is a bit of an issue given that what he'd seen was DreamXD effortlessly destroying the ancient artefact that Techno's best pickaxe had glanced off like so much bedrock, and then just as effortlessly putting it back. Oh, and appearing out of nowhere. He doesn’t want to fight someone with hacks like _that_. Not without _prep time_ , at least.

He laughs nervously, putting his hands up, and the voices in his head grumble their irritation. “Kidding, kidding,” he says quickly, and hears Phil muffle a laugh next to him. Laugh away, Phil. You’re not the one being threatened by an _actually_ alarming version of Dream. “Thanks for putting it back, really!”

DreamXD keeps staring.

Techno nudges Phil with his elbow.

Phil angles a glance at him as if to say, _seriously?_ , but throws out a “Yeah, we’re really grateful.” anyway.

Techno smiles winningly, which is very hard with fangs.

DreamXD’s impossible gaze lingers on them for a few more seconds, and then skips sharply back to Dream, who’s still clawing vaguely at the ground between tremors like some kind of demented worm, trying to inch his way along millimeter by endless millimeter. His eyes are still that feverish warped forest green, and Techno, holding back a sigh of relief, doubts sincerely that he heard any of the conversation. His fingers are twitching, uncontrollable, picking at slush.

DreamXD crouches down in front of him in one uncanny line of movement, and then it is still again, staring.

Very slowly, Dream raises his head a little and meets DreamXD’s mask-covered eyes with his own bare, luminous gaze. And after a silence so long Techno almost gets bored and wanders off to do something actually productive, Dream says, in a voice that croaks and echoes oddly from his throat, “You… You’re—”

DreamXD reaches down and, very carefully, picks up one of Dream’s hands. All the muscles of it go limp in DreamXD’s grasp like sand collapsing inwards on itself, and Dream starts shaking again. DreamXD holds onto his hand through it, still perfectly, unnaturally still, and then it takes its left hand and places the splayed fingers of it on Dream’s exposed forehead, still so careful, so deliberate, so slow, that it might almost be called gentle. And then it

**R E S T**

says DreamXD, say the mountains, says the sky, says the fabric of the world, and Techno feels his reality flicker, feels like he’s lagged right into a block, lost sight and sound and smell. The world is a sweep of colors, the world is blackening like gravel from above, the world is screaming in his ears, the world is the world is the world is

When he comes back to himself, Ranboo is peeking out from behind his door, Dream is collapsed dead-asleep in the dirt and slush, and DreamXD has completely vanished.

He takes a moment to reorient himself, and then he shoots a glance at Phil and points at Dream.

“Hey, Phil, you’ve got markers, right?” he asks, and grins widely. “Have you _ever_ seen him asleep before? Let’s graffiti his face!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a lot of worldbuilding lurking behind the events of this chapter, some of which will be explained later and some of which will just continue lurking. if you have any questions about what's going on, especially in the more surreal scenes, please ask in the comments! we'll get back to you if it's not something we plan on revealing later!


	4. Iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: panic attacks yet again

“ _What is this?_ ”

Techno glances up from his book after a very long, very deliberate pause, and looks at the bright red flower clenched in Dream’s fist.

“Looks like a poppy,” he says after a moment.

Dream’s grip spasms tighter around the stem, and across the room Ranboo frowns.

“Careful!” he says, sounding almost scolding. “You’ll crush it.”

Dream seems surprised enough that he actually listens, fingers relaxing slightly even as he whips around to glare at Ranboo (who flinches, of course), and Techno snorts. “Did _you_ do this?”

Ranboo jumps a little, looking immediately shifty, because he can’t deflect suspicion to save his actual life, but the slightly panicky confusion in his voice is entirely genuine. “Do what? What? No?”

Dream glares at him for a moment longer just for good measure, but visibly gives up after a moment to go back to scowling down at the flower in his hands.

“It must’ve been Puffy, then,” he mutters aloud, sounding distinctly sullen. He always manages to turn into a fifteen year old who’s in trouble with his mom when Puffy’s involved, and it’s the funniest thing Techno has seen in his life. “She already _left_ , how am I supposed to give it back?”

Phil shrugs from where he’s messing around with the brewing stands, scarred wings moving with the motion. “Guess you’ll just have to use it, then,” he says, and Techno has known Phil long enough to know what his voice sounds like when he’s holding back laughter.

“Yeah, Dream,” Techno agrees mildly, looking back down at his book. “You can use it to decorate that sad, sad little house of yours. Maybe take up gardening.”

Dream makes an incoherent, frustrated sound and storms off without another word, flower in hand. The door slams behind him, which isn’t very polite houseguest behavior, but Techno will let it slide just this once because if he opens his mouth right now he’ll probably just start laughing.

There’s a brief pause while they all wordlessly wait to make sure he’s gone, and then Ranboo says, “So which of you was it really?”

Techno just grins. He has so many flowers. He can keep this going for weeks.

* * *

“Puffy, do you have any aces?” Ranboo asks, surveying his cards.

“I do!” Puffy answers cheerfully, picking a card out of her hand and passing it across the table to him with a smile that’s so bright he can’t help but return it behind his facemask.

Puffy is so _good_. He doesn’t really understand how she does it, but he can’t help but admire it.

“Thanks,” he says. “Um, Dream, do you have any-“

And then there’s a pounding on the door, hard and heavy, shattering the peaceful, friendly warmth of the room, and Ranboo’s blood freezes in his veins.

“ _Oi! Dream!_ ”

That’s... Tommy.

That’s Tommy’s voice. That’s _Tommy’s_ voice- what is he _doing_ here- how does he _know_ -

“I _know you’re in there, bastard!_ ”

Ranboo shoots a frantic, questioning glance across the table at Puffy- _did you do this did you know did you know?_ \- but she doesn’t even seem to notice, eyes fixed on the door as the color slowly drains from her face, and it’s enough of an answer in itself.

Techno is pushing himself to his feet, muttering under his breath irritably, one hand already on the hilt of his sword, and Ranboo’s heart spikes in his chest to see it, panic wrapping cold claws around his lungs. There’s no way this doesn’t end in blood, and he doesn’t want to see Techno kill Tommy, and he doesn’t- he doesn’t think he wants to see Tommy kill Dream, either, and he can’t _breathe._

And Dream-

Dream is grinning, something cracked and hungry in too-bright green eyes, and it’s one of the worst things Ranboo has ever seen.

The door slams open, and Ranboo shuffles back on instinct, heart hammering in his throat, tucking himself back against the wall and pulling his legs up against his chest like maybe if he can make himself small enough they won’t see him. It’s not rational, and he knows it’s not, but he wants so desperately not to _be_ here, not to be in the middle of this, not to be _looked at_ -

Tommy isn’t alone.

Tubbo’s behind him on one side, and Sapnap on the other, all three armed and armored to the teeth in netherite, shimmering with enchantment. Ranboo can see others behind them, gathered outside the house, mostly hidden by the darkness of the night. He can guess, though. It’s probably most everyone who’d assembled to intervene at the last minute in Dream’s awful vault, everyone who’d seen his ghoulish museum in progress, everyone who’d agreed he should be locked away.

Except for Puffy. And except for Ranboo.

“Kinda rude to just barge into people’s houses, Tommy,” Techno is saying, dangerously calm, a glint in his eyes behind his mask.

“This is nothin’ to do with you, Technoblade,” Tommy says. He hasn’t looked away from Dream once. His sword is unsheathed at his side, knuckles white on the hilt.

“You’re trespassin’ on _my_ property, _again_ , I’d say that makes it to do with me-“

“Tommy,” Dream interrupts, standing, voice awful and sing-song silky, and Ranboo knows that tone, _hates_ that tone. It makes him think of obsidian, of vandalized pages, and he hasn’t had to hear it in weeks but now that he is it’s putting him back in the panic room, back in the ruins of the Community House, back in the _cell_ -

Although, depending on how this goes, he might be winding up there again anyways, _ha_ , and he _can’t breathe_.

“Hello, Dream,” Tommy bites out, voice like iron and ice, sharp and brittle all at once. Ranboo doesn’t know if he’s ever heard him sound colder.

Dream is still smiling. “Didn’t think you’d go to the trouble of coming to _find_ me,” he says. Ranboo can’t see his eyes from where he’s sitting. “Did you miss spending time with me that much?”

“Shut _up_ ,” Tommy snarls. His fingers are trembling around the hilt of his sword, just a little, and he readjusts his grip to hold it tighter.

“What?” Dream says, and he’s still grinning, and he takes a step closer, and Tommy’s whole body twitches like he’s desperately fighting down the urge to back away. “I’m just _saying_ -“

And then there’s a sword at Dream’s neck, and he pauses midstep and midsentence, and Sapnap is saying, “ _Don’t_ , Dream.”

Ranboo ducks his head, digs fingers into his hair. He doesn’t want to watch this- he doesn’t want to _see_ this-

There’s a hand on his shoulder, gentle and grounding, and he glances up past his fingers to see Phil standing at his side, watching intently as the scene plays out. He wordlessly squeezes Ranboo’s shoulder, a silent reassurance, and it’s such a small gesture, but the pressure in his chest lets up a little anyways, enough for him to grab a few thin breaths.

“Dream, I don’t know _how_ you got out,” Tommy says, “but it’s _over_ now, got it? You’re going back to jail, and you’re _not_ getting out again.”

“Tommy-”

“ _Alright,_ ” Techno finally says, cutting through the conversation with all the weight and menace of a broadsword, and the room goes quiet. “I don’t know if you’ve all just _forgotten I’m here_ , but this is still _my house_ , and if you’re gonna be dragging one of my houseguests out in the middle of game night, we’re gonna have a problem.”

He taps a finger pointedly against the pommel of his sword. “I’m sure Tubbo and Quackity back there remember the _last_ time there was an attempted arrest at this house,” he says, grinning sharp beneath his mask. “Because as _I_ recall it, it was four versus one and I still won _easily_. So…“

“No, it’s fine,” Dream says mildly, and Ranboo stares at him. “I’ll go.”

“You’ll _what?_ ” Tommy says, voice pitching up in shock.

“You’ll _what,_ ” Techno says flatly.

“I’ll go with you,” Dream repeats. He takes a step back to glance around the room, a little theatrically, and Ranboo’s sure he doesn’t imagine the way he lingers for a moment on Puffy, still pale and visibly distressed, and on Ranboo himself, pressed into the corner and trying to remember how to breathe. “Wouldn’t want to cause any _problems_.” He turns back to Tommy, smiles. “That’s your job, right?”

He tucks his hands in his hoodie pocket, nothing but casual, and Tommy immediately focuses in on the motion, whole body going wire-tense. “Dump your inventory!” he orders, sounding just shy of frantic, trading the sword in his hand for an axe. “Drop it, drop it-“

“Tommy, if you put another hole in my floor you won’t even have to worry about Dream, I’ll kill you myself,” Techno announces, and it seems to be enough to jar Tommy out of whatever momentary panic that’s gripped him, because he snaps his mouth shut, lips pressed tight together.

“Fine,” he says, and then, “We’ll do it outside, then. Come on, _Dream._ ”

He turns toward the door, careful not to turn his back fully on Dream, and it’s only then that Ranboo manages to register that the door has been open all this time, and all the comfortable warmth of the room has been leeched away by the nighttime tundra cold blowing in from outside.

Dream follows Tommy out the door, still seeming nothing but casual, the rest of Tommy’s backup moving with them, all keeping watchful eyes on Dream. Puffy visibly hesitates for a moment before following after them, reluctant in a way Ranboo doesn’t know if he’s ever seen from her before.

Techno moves to the door after they leave to watch the scene continue to play out outside. Phil offers Ranboo a hand up, and once he can get his legs under him again he follows, lingering anxiously at Techno’s shoulder, feeling somewhat safer at his back. He can see more of the faces Tommy brought with him, from here- Quackity, Niki, Eret. Sam, lingering at the back of the group, face unreadable.

He still doesn’t want to watch. He can’t look away.

Tommy drives a shovel into the ground, lifts a clod of dirt away, then glares Dream down. “Put your stuff in the hole, Dream.”

“Sure,” Dream says with a shrug, and does.

Eight blocks of dirt. Four sticks. A spruce sapling. The gold hoe Ranboo gave him as a joke. And then, after the briefest of pauses, a stone axe.

Then he stops, steps back.

“What,” Tommy says, and then, “I said _all_ your stuff, Dream-“

“That’s it,” Dream says, gesturing at the pitiful little collection of items. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Tommy says, immediate and vehement. “There’s no _way_ you haven’t gotten more than this.”

“This is all of it,” Dream says again, and Ranboo’s not sure if he’s imagining the almost upset, almost irritated edge creeping into his voice, buried underneath the teasing nonchalance. “I don’t have anything else.”

“I _can_ just kill you and see what you drop, Dream-”

“No, that’s true,” Techno says, leaning against his porch rail as though he’s watching a show. All eyes turn back to him, and at his shoulder, Ranboo twitches and edges a step behind him. “He’s dead broke. Been mooching off mine and my friends’ hospitality for ages now, it’s pathetic. Good for a laugh, though.”

“ _Thanks_ , Techno,” Dream says acidly.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

Tommy looks from Dream to Techno and back again. “What, you two are- what, _friends_ now or something?”

“God, no,” Techno says. “I just can’t make him leave. Like a parasite.”

“Well, thank fuck,” Tommy says. “Well… you’re _welcome_ for gettin’ rid of him, then, I guess.” He pulls a flint and steel from his pocket, kneels and strikes them together to draw a spark, and in moments Dream’s pitiful little pile of belongings is ablaze.

“Oh, no,” Dream says, staring unblinking at the fire, voice devoid of feeling. “Not my… dirt. How will I _ever_ replace that?”

“Yeah, laugh it up, jackass,” Tommy snaps, rolling his eyes as he straightens. “Might be pretty difficult, actually, from inside your cell.”

“Hey, Technoblade,” somebody calls, and Ranboo has to scan around for a moment before he spots Quackity, standing by Dream’s pitiful dirt house, squinting up at the scattered flowers dotting the roof and grinning a little, bemused. “This yours, man? Cause I, uh, I think maybe you should stick with potatoes from now on.”

Techno snorts. “Don’t insult me unless you want to lose the rest of your teeth, Quackity. Nah, that’s Dream’s.”

“ _Is_ it,” Quackity says, glancing back. “So, uh, you don’t care what happens to it?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Oh, that’s _exactly_ what I was hoping to hear,” Quackity mutters with a grin that stretches the pickaxe scar down his face, and pulls out a block to tower up to the roof, a torch in his off hand.

The little garden doesn’t burn bright or long, the little plants too sparse and snowbound to fuel a bonfire, but the light of it seems to catch in Dream’s one visible seagrass eye anyways. He watches quietly as it goes up in flames, expressionless for a moment, before shrugging.

“Not like I care,” he says mildly. “Those were only up there because these idiots thought it would be funny.”

“It _was_ pretty funny,” Techno says.

Dream ignores him, glancing back at Tommy. “How did you know I was here, anyways?”

Tommy scowls, immediately defensive. “Why should I tell _you?_ ”

Dream shrugs. “Just curious.”

Tommy glares at him for a moment, then huffs and looks away, glancing over at Puffy. “Followed Puffy,” he admits, and gives her a half-apologetic look. “Sorry, by the way. That wasn’t very cool of me, but, uh, needs must, yeah?”

“…It’s fine,” Puffy says, a sigh in her voice, misery all over her face but head still held high. “I get it.”

“…Well! Good,” Tommy says awkwardly, sounding more than a little relieved. “That’s… good. Um-”

“Can we go already?” Dream breaks in, sounding irritated.

Tommy startles a little, gives him a suspicious look. “Why in such a rush, huh? What, have you got somethin’ up your sleeve?”

“Nothing,” Dream says, holding up his arms in their wrecked and shredded sleeves as though to prove it. “I’d just rather be back in jail than keep listening to this.”

Tommy folds his arms, narrows his eyes. “I don’t believe you,” he decides after a moment. “But y’know what, Dream? It doesn’t matter what you’re planning. You’re _not_ going free again. Not after what you’ve done.”

Dream smiles, thin and unhappy. “Oh, I know.”

“…Right,” Tommy says, turning away, still never quite putting his back to Dream. “Let’s go, then.”

Dream nods, glances back up at the porch. “Techno. Phil.” A pause, and then, “Ranboo,” and Ranboo twitches. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but, uh, it hasn’t.”

“I dunno, _I’ve_ had fun,” Techno says.

Puffy gives them a final anxious, guilty look before following after Tommy and Dream, an unhappy twist to her mouth, the rest of Tommy’s escort group gathering around them, cutting off all avenues of escape. A little relieved noise escapes Ranboo as soon as all eyes are safely off of him, and Phil blinks a little and glances back at him.

“Well, that was disappointing,” Techno says eventually, turning back into the house. “Got _all_ excited for some good violence, and for what? Can’t believe three weeks in prison turned Dream into a worse doormat than _Ranboo_. No offense, Ranboo.”

“None taken,” Ranboo says faintly, following him back inside. His head still feels a little swimmy with panic, and all the heat of the fireplace had escaped out the open door over the course of the confrontation. He’s trembling all over, can’t place if it’s from the cold, the residual terror shaking its way out of his system, the memory of all those eyes on his skin, or all of the above.

His eyes land on the table.

Everyone’s hands are still there, scattered on the lacquered wood, cards in red and black and white. Dream had nearly had a full book, he notes distantly, three fives sitting face-up on the table. He might’ve won the hand, if they’d kept playing, if the door hasn’t slammed open and all the cards been dropped. Phil moves to close the door, finally, but the room is still so cold.

He’s not worried about Dream. He’s not. That would be- he’s _not_ , not after everything Dream did to him, after all the time he’s spent wishing he would just vanish from his life. He should be relieved, now that it’s come true, but he’s not, and he doesn’t know why and he doesn’t know why and he doesn’t know why. He drags in a shuddering breath, tries to place why the panicky distress flooding his system still isn’t receding.

Dream is gone. Puffy- Puffy might be also. He doesn’t know if she’ll be back- if she’ll have any reason to come back, without Dream here.

He’ll-

The room is cold, and it used to be warm.

He’ll miss them, he thinks.

And that’s a ridiculous thought, because Dream has never done anything but ruin his life and dig fingers into his mind and pull him apart piece by piece, and he should be _relieved_ , but they’d reached a sort of equilibrium over these past weeks, where Dream couldn’t hurt him and Dream couldn’t use him and Dream was just a _person_ who Ranboo didn’t have to fear.

And they’d played cards, and he’d won, and it had been good. It had been fun.

He should- he should gather up the cards. It’s not like they’re going to keep playing. He should gather up the cards, but he doesn’t. He just stands there, and tries to be relieved, and doesn’t succeed.

And then the door opens, and he turns, and Dream walks in, half-laughing, a slightly unsteady grin beneath his broken mask. “That was _fun_ \- Oh, the _looks_ on their faces when we hit the barrier- I only got to see them for a second, but-“

 _Oh, right. He still can’t leave_ , Ranboo registers, and then punches him.

Dream stumbles back a few steps, grin immediately wiped away in favor of blank shock, bringing one hand up to his face. “What-“

“I can’t _believe_ you!” Ranboo yells- oh, wow, he is yelling, isn’t he. “What, you just did all that for- for fun? You _knew_ you would still get sent back, and you just- That was _terrifying!_ And I was _worried_ about you!”

Dream is blinking at him blankly, like Ranboo’s words aren’t really registering. “ _You_ were _worried_ about _me_?” he echoes. “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know! I’m not _happy_ about it!” Ranboo snaps. “Just- just- _think about other people for once in your life!_ ”

Dream is staring at him still, seemingly uncomprehending, and it makes his skin prickle and burn, but for once he doesn’t flinch away.

“Oh, now, _this_ is the real entertainment,” Techno says, grinning from ear to ear. “Even got a little bit of violence in there! _Nice_ job, Ranboo. Still not as fun as if we would’ve gotten to fight them- _honestly_ , Dream, I can’t believe you just _caved_ like that. We could’ve fought ‘em together. Just like old times!”

Dream finally jerks his gaze away from Ranboo to roll his eyes at Techno, folding his arms a little defensively. “Fighting a dozen people with just a stone axe and no armor or shield didn’t exactly seem _fun_ to me, Techno.”

Techno squints at him. “I- you know I would have _lent_ you stuff, right? I have _so much gear_ , dude, grinding is basically all I _do_ -“

Dream blinks. “Wait, really?”

Techno tosses up an exasperated hand. “Yes!”

“…Oh,” Dream says. He looks- lost, maybe. More lost than Ranboo’s ever seen him. “Well.” And then, again, “Well.”

He doesn’t say anything else, after that. The room feels unsettled, still, all full of jagged and complicated invisible things- but the door is closed and the fireplace is crackling and it’s startling to warm up again, the windows fogging against the cold outside.

And, finally, Ranboo can breathe again.

* * *

Dream sits on his roof, and holds ash in his hands, and tells himself he won.

It’s afternoon. He’s been sitting up here for hours, for— a long time. Since before sunrise. He hasn’t spoken to anyone, not since Ranboo gathered up the scattered cards all in their awkward, uncertain silence, not since Dream wandered, still half-dazed, out of the room and into the open air.

Techno and Phil left just after dawn towards the ocean, without a word to Dream, so deep in discussion Phil nearly tripped on one of his own torches. Ranboo emerged from later, around noon, and stood and stared in Dream’s direction like he was trying to see through him. And then, just as wordless, he turned around and wandered south.

So Dream is alone, and he is holding the ash of what had yesterday been flowers in his hands, and is telling himself that last night was everything he could have wanted aside from freedom. He pulled a plan together on no warning and pulled it off without a hitch, he pulled one over on everyone who thought they could take him away, he was _feared_ again, feared and hated and monstrous and capable of victory. He—

He didn’t flinch when he saw Sam. He _didn’t._

_Prisoner. You shouldn’t have escaped._

Light too harsh for shadows, obsidian—

He’d been so excited to see Tommy. He knows the bitter broken shape of Tommy, all the cracks and handholds he left in him, and it’s always been such a simple thing to pull him apart. To make him flinch. Finally, finally, after all these weeks of uncertainty, he was greeted by someone with whom he knew exactly where he stood.

And he’d smiled, and he’d spoken, and Tommy had shied away, and Dream hadn’t— He hadn’t been fulfilled at all. He hadn’t felt victorious. He’s holding ash in his hands.

Torchlight snapping in lava’s voice, dirt walls darkening, nameless nameless a monster in a cage—

_Stay._

There were people, there, when he came back. He still doesn’t know what to think of that. He still doesn’t— He still doesn’t. He still doesn’t know why they were there, waiting, Ranboo with his worry and Techno with his weapons.

Most of the ash blew away in the night. He’d gathered some of the rest, when he came up here, mixed in grey-on-brown with loose dirt. He’d stared at it, and remembered flames, and remembered flames, and remembered he had nothing all over again, nothing nothing nothing.

And he’d wondered, for a moment, why he’d seen fit to let what little he had gathered burn in sacrifice. But— he reminds himself, he reminds himself— who cares about eight blocks of dirt, who cares about junk and weeds and jetsam dumped on him as a joke? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t _need_ to care. All caring does is leave hooks and bindings on your heart.

And yet, the ash is still staining his hands grey when he looks up from it and sees Puffy, silhouetted by the sun, coming from behind the horizon.

He watches her approach, the hair of her blending with the snow. Her steps are careful and steady, and she has a basket hanging off one arm, and something wooden slung over her back, and she stops six paces in front of where he sits and she looks up.

“Duckling,” she says, and her voice is clear, but there’s something sorrowful behind her eyes. “I’m sorry about your garden.”

Dream shrugs.

The sorrowful thing is still there. “I told Tommy. And, uh, everyone. About how you being stuck here works,” she says. The wind catches her hair, and she has to pull a chunk of it out of her mouth with her free hand. “Sam—” Dream _doesn’t_ flinch, “—backed me up. So they trusted him enough to leave.”

Dream looks at her, and looks, and looks, and wonders why she’s come back. And she looks back, and the thing behind her eyes is steel and snow.

“You shouldn’t have acted like that towards Tommy,” she says. “That was wrong, that was horrible, and you know it.”

“He—”

“You shouldn’t have,” she cuts in, and her voice is firm and final, and her back is straight. “And we’ll be talking about it. But, um, to fix your garden,” she adds. All the edges of her soften. She shifts her basket between her two hands, and the wood over her back clacks together. “I’ve got all the seeds I could find, and some lilac saplings from my garden, and some vines and trellises, and— I don’t know if any of these’ll grow up here,” she finishes, biting her lip. “But I figured I’d try, you know? Never hurts to try.”

And she’s still looking up at him from the ground, and that sorrowful thing is behind her eyes again, and she came all the way from her home to mourn a garden he didn’t— he _didn’t_ — he doesn’t care about. The poppies were beautiful against the sunrise—

He didn’t care. He doesn’t care.

He looks down at her from his roof, at her wicker basket and her mittens and her sheep’s-wool hair, and he doesn’t know what to think.

 _And I was_ worried _about you!_

He doesn’t know. But he doesn’t think, he doesn’t think he wants her to leave.

“Come on then,” he tries, and he hopes, and he thinks that if there’s two pairs of hands, they can get most of the planting done before nightfall. “Get up here.”

And her smile, for some reason, blossoms like the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy sixteenth!!


End file.
